
Class Ua4 
Book_ 

Copyright^*- 



COPi'RlGHT DEPOSIT. 



OVER THERE 
AND BACK 




1st Lieut. Joseph S. Smith, U. S. A. 



OVER THERE 
AND BACK 

IN THREE UNIFORMS 

Being the Experiences of an American 

Boy in the Canadian, British and 

American Armies at the Front and 

through No Man's Land 



By 
Lieut. Joseph S. Smith 

Author of 
"Trench Warfare" 



New York 

E. P. Dutton & Go, 

681 Fifth Avenue 






COPYBIGHT, 1918 

By E. P. BUTTON & CO. 



Printed in the United States of America 



MAR -5 1918 
©C!.A481924 



A. \ 



TO 

THE MEMORY OF MY PAL 

2nd Lieut. C. G. ROSS 

KILLED IN ACTION AT MONCHY 
APRIL 23, 191 7 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Facing Page 
1st Lieut. Joseph S. Smith, U. S. A Frontispiece 

The Author in His Uniform as a Private in the 

Canadian Overseas Force 14 

A Wiring Party Surprised by a Star Shell 88 

The Bull Ring 96 

Red Cross Stretcher-bearers at Work 178 

Their First Experience of Gas 180 

The Author in His Uniform as 2nd Lieutenant 

in a Scotch Regiment 192 

The StafiE Going on a Round of Inspection Behind 

the Front Line 220 

"Good-by, Old Man." The Bombardier and His 

Dying Friend 224 



EDITOR'S NOTE 

Lieutenant Joseph S. Smith is an American, 
born in Philadelphia. He enlisted in the 
Twenty-ninth Vancouver Battalion in Canada 
in 1 9 14 and went to France with the Second 
Canadian division to be sent over seas. He 
served with the Canadians until August, 191 6, 
when he received a commission in the British 
army and was attached to the Royal Scots. 
He was at the front with this regiment until 
August, 1917, when he resigned his commis- 
sion to come home and put on the uniform 
of his own country. He is now an officer in 
the army of the United States. 

During his three years of fighting he has 
been through every big battle on the British 
end of the Western front, including St. Eloi, 
the Somme, the Ancre and Arras. 



INTRODUCTION 

In August, 1 9 14, I was a cowboy on a 
ranch in the interior of British Columbia. 
How good a cowboy I would not undertake 
to say, because if there were any errands off 
the ranch the foreman seemed better able 
to spare me for them than any one else in 
the outfit. 

One ambition, and one only, possessed me 
in those days. And it was not to own the 
ranch! All in the world I wanted was to 
accumulate money enough to carry me to 
San Francisco when the Panama exposition 
opened in the autumn. After that I didn't 
care. It would be time enough to worry 
about another job when I had seen the fair. 

Ordinarily I was riding the range five 
days in the week. Saturdays I was sent on 
a thirty-five mile round trip for the mail. 
It was the most delightful day of them all 

9 



INTRODUCTION 



for me. The trail lay down the valley of 
the Fraser and although I had been riding 
it for months it still wove a spell over me 
that never could be broken. Slipping rap- 
idly by as though escaping to the sea from 
the grasp of the hills that hemmed it in 
on all sides the river always fascinated me. 
It was new every time I reached its edge. 

An early Saturday morning in August 
found me jogging slowly along the trail to 
Dog Creek. Dog Creek was our post office 
and trading center. This morning, how- 
ever, my mind was less on the beauties of 
the Fraser than on the Dog Creek hotel. 
Every week I had my dinner there before 
starting in mid-afternoon on my return to 
the ranch, and this day had succeeded one 
of misunderstanding with "cookie" wherein 
all the boys of our outfit had come off sec- 
ond best. I was hungry and that dinner 
at the hotel was going to taste mighty good. 

Out there on the range we had heard 
rumors of a war in Europe. We all talked 

10 



INTRODUCTION 



it over in the evening and decided it was 
another one of those fights that were always 
starting in the Balkans. One had just been 
finished a few months before and we 
thought it was about time another was 
underway so we gave the matter no par- 
ticular thought. But when I got within 
sight of Dog Creek I knew something was 
up. The first thing I heard was that some- 
body had retreated from Mons and that the 
Germans were chasing them. So, the Ger- 
mans were fighting anyway. 

Then a big Indian came up to me as I 
was getting off my pony and told me Eng- 
land's big white chief was going to war, or 
had gone. He wasn't certain which, but he 
was going too. Would I? 

I laughed at him. "What do you mean, 
go to war?" I asked him. 

I wasn't English; I wasn't Canadian. I 
was from the good old U. S. A. and from 
all we could understand the States were 
neutral. So, I reasoned, I ought to be neu- 

11 



INTRODUCTION 



tral too, and I went in to see what there 
might be to eat. 

There was plenty of excitement in the 
dining room. Under its influence I began 
to look at the thing in a different light. 
While I was an alien, I had lived in Can- 
ada. I had enjoyed her hospitality. Much 
of my education was acquired in a Canadian 
school. Canadians were among my dearest 
friends. Some of these very fellows, there 
in Dog Creek, were "going down" to enlist. 

All the afternoon we argued about it. 
Politics, economics, diplomacy; none of 
them entered into the question. In fact we 
hadn't the faintest idea what the war was 
all about. Our discussion hinged solely on 
what we, personally, ought to do. England 
was at war. She had sent out a call to all 
the Empire for men; for help. Dog Creek 
heard and was going to answer that call. 
Even if I were an alien I had been in that 
district for more than a year and I owed 
it to Dog Creek and the district to join up 
with the rest. 



INTRODUCTION 



By that time I wanted to go. I was crazy 
to go! It would be great to see London 
and maybe Paris and some of the other fam- 
ous old towns — if the war lasted long 
enough for us to get over there. I began 
to bubble over with enthusiasm, just think- 
ing about it. So I made an appointment 
with some of the boys for the next evening, 
rode back to the ranch and threw the mail 
and my job at the foreman. 

A week later we were in Vancouver. 
Then things began to get plainer — to some 
of the fellows. We heard of broken 
treaties, ^'scraps of paper," "Kultur," the 
rights of nations, big and small, "freedom 
of the seas," and other phrases that meant 
less than nothing to most of us. It was 
enough for me, then, that the country which 
had given me the protection of its laws 
wanted to help England. I trusted the gov- 
ernment to know what it was doing. 

Before we were in town an hour we 
found ourselves at a recruiting office. By 
the simple expedient of moving my birth- 

13 



INTRODUCTION 



place a few hundred miles north I became 
a Canadian and a member of the expe- 
ditionary force — a big word with a big 
meaning. 

Christmas came and I was in a well- 
trained battalion of troops with no more 
knowledge of the war than the retreat from 
Mons, the battles of the Marne and the 
Aisne and an occasional newspaper report 
of the capture of a hundred thousand troops 
here and a couple of hundred thousand 
casualties somewhere else. We knew, at 
that rate, it couldn't possibly last until we 
got to the other side, but we prayed loudly 
that it would. 

In April we heard of the gassing of the 
first Canadians at Ypres. Then the casualty 
lists from that field arrived and hit Van- 
couver with a thud. Instantly a change 
came over the city. Before that day, war 
had been romance; a thing far away, about 
which to read and over which to wave flags. 
It was intangible, impersonal. It was the 

14 




The Author in His Uniform as a Private in the Canadian 
Overseas Force 



INTRODUCTION 



same attitude the States exhibited in the au- 
tumn of '17. Then suddenly it became real. 
This chap and that chap; a neighbor boy, 
a fellow from the next block or the next 
desk. Dead! Gassed! This was war; 
direct, personal, where you could count the 
toil among your friends. 

Personally, I thought that what the Ger- 
mans had done was a terrible thing and I 
wondered what kind of people they might 
be that they could, without warning, deliver 
such a foul blow. In a prize ring the 
Kaiser would have lost the decision then 
and there. We wondered about gas and 
discussed it by the hour in our barracks. 
Some of us, bigger fools than the rest, in- 
sisted that the German nation would repu- 
diate its army. But days went by and noth- 
ing of the kind occurred. 

It was then I began to take my soldiering 
a little more seriously. If a nation wanted 
to win a war so badly that it would damn 
its good name for ever by using means ruled 

15 



INTRODUCTION 



by all humanity as beyond the bounds of 
civilized warfare, it must have a very big 
object in view. And I started — late it is 
true — to obtain some clue to those objects. 

May found us at our port of embarkation 
for the voyage to England. The news of 
the Lusitania came over the wires and that 
evening our convoy steamed. For the first 
time, I believe, I fully realized I was a 
soldier in the greatest war of all the ages. 

Between poker, "blackjack" and "crown 
and anchor" with the crew, we talked over 
the two big things that had happened in our 
soldier lives — gas and the Lusitania, And 
to these we later added liquid fire. 

Our arguments, our logic, may have been 
elemental, but I insist they struck at the 
root. I may sum them up thus : Germany 
was not using the methods of fighting that 
could be countenanced by a civilized nation. 
As the nation stood behind its army in all 
this barbarism there must be something in- 
herently lacking in it despite its wonderful 

16 



INTRODUCTION 



music, its divine poetry, its record in the 
sciences. It, too, must be barbarian at 
heart. We agreed that if it should win this 
war it would be very uncomfortable to 
belong to one of the allied nations, or even 
to live in the world at all, since it was cer- 
tain German manners and German methods 
would not improve with victory. And we, 
as a battalion, were ready to take our places 
in France to back up our words with deeds. 

A week or so later we landed in England. 
A marked change had come over the men 
since the day we left Halifax. Then most 
of us regarded the whole war, or our part 
in it, as more or less of a lark. On land- 
ing we were still for a lark, but something 
else had come into our consciousness. We 
were soldiers fighting for a cause — a cause 
clear cut and well defined — the saving of 
the world from a militarily mad country 
without a conscience. 

At our camp in England we saw those 
boys of the first division who had stood in 

17 



INTRODUCTION 



their trenches in front of Ypres one bright 
April morning and watched with great 
curiosity a peculiar looking bank of fog 
roll toward them from the enemy's line. 
It rolled into their trenches and in a second 
those men were choking and gasping for 
breath. Their lungs filled with the rotten 
stuff and they were dying by dozens in the 
most terrible agony, beating off even as they 
died a part of the ^^brave" Prussian army as 
it came up behind those gas clouds ; came up 
with gas masks on and bayonets dripping 
with the blood of men lying on the ground 
fighting, true, but for breath. A great 
army that Prussian army! And what a 
"glorious" victory! Truly should the Hun 
be proud! 

So far as I am concerned, Germany did 
not lose the war at the Battle of the Marne, 
at the Aisne or at the Yser. She lost it 
there at Ypres, on April 22, 191 5. 

It is no exaggeration when I say our 
eagerness to work, to complete our train- 
ing, to learn how to kill so we could take 

18 



INTRODUCTION 



our place in the line and help fight off those 
mad people, grew by the hour. THEY 
stiffened our backs and made us fighting 
mad. We saw what they had done to our 
boys from Canada; they and their gas. The 
effect on our battalion was the effect on the 
whole army and, I am quite sure, on the rest 
of the world. They put themselves beyond 
the pale. They compelled the world to 
look on them as mad dogs and to treat them 
as mad dogs. 

We trained in England until August 
when we went to France. To all outward 
appearances we were still happy, carefree 
soldiers, all out for a good time. We were 
happy! We were happy we were there, 
and down deep there was solid satisfaction, 
not on account of the different-colored 
books that were issuing from every chan- 
cellory in Europe but from a feeling 
rooted in white men's hearts, backed by the 
knowledge of Germany's conduct, that we 
were there in a righteous cause. 

Our second stop in our march toward 

19 



INTRODUCTION 



the line was a little village which had been 
occupied by the Boches in their mad dash 
toward Paris. Our billet was a farm just 
on the edge of the village. The housewife 
permitted us in her kitchen to do our cook- 
ing, at the same time selling us coffee. We 
stayed there two or three days and became 
quite friendly with her even if she did scold 
us for our muddy boots. 

Two pretty little kiddies played around 
the house, got in the way, were scolded and 
spanked and in the next instant loved to 
death by Madame. Then she would parade 
them before a picture of a clean-cut looking 
Frenchman in the uniform of the army and 
say something about ''apres la guerre." 

In a little crib to one side of the room was 
a tiny baby, neglected by Madame except 
that she bathed and fed it. The neglect was 
so pronounced that our curiosity was 
aroused. The explanation came through 
the estaminet gossip and later from Ma- 
dame herself. 

20 



INTRODUCTION 



A Hun captain of cavalry had stayed 
there a few days in August, '14, and not 
only had he allowed his detachment full 
license in the village but had abused his 
position in the house in the accustomed 
manner of his bestial class. 

As Madame told us her story; how her 
husband had rushed off to his unit with the 
first call for reserves, leaving her alone with 
two children, and how the blond beast had 
come, our fists clenched and we boiled with 
rage. 

That is German war! But it is not all. 

What will be the stories that come out 
of what is now occupied France? 

This French woman's story was new to us 
then but, like other things in the war, as 
we moved through the country it became 
common enough with here and there a re- 
volting detail more horrible than anything 
we had heard before. 



21 



INTRODUCTION 



Now and then Germany expresses aston- 
ishment at the persistence of the British and 
the French. They are a funny people, the 
Germans. There are so many things they 
do not, perhaps cannot, understand. They 
never could understand why Americans, 
such as myself, who enlisted in a spirit of 
adventure and with not a single thought on 
the justice of the cause, could experience 
such a marked change of feeling as to 
regard this conflict as the most holy crusade 
in which a man could engage. 

It is a holy crusade ! Never in the history 
of the world was the cause of right more 
certainly on the side of an army than it 
is to-day on the side of the Allies. We who 
have been through the furnace of France 
know this. 

I only say what every other American 
who has been fighting under an alien flag, 
said when our country came in: "Thank 
God we have done it. Some boy, Wilson, 
believe me!" 

2^ 



^We^re ofif!" 

"Y're a blinkin' liar! We ain't moved!" 

^We have! Come and see!" 

So Tommy and I clattered toward the 
deck to find out, but alas! an irritable ser- 
geant ordered us back. 

"You want to get us torpedoed, you 
blamed fools," he called. "Down below 
with them cigarettes." 

So Tommy and I knew we were at 
last crossing to France. We tripped as 
lightly as new hobnailed boots would let us 
down the companion stairs and into the 
smoking room. Well named it was! A 
Shanghai opium den would have looked 
like a daisy-covered field beside it. Squat- 
ting and squeezed into that little place 
were a company of men, every one smoking. 
All the portholes were closed and there was 
not a ventilator to be seen. 

23 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



"Hey, fellows, we're off," Tommy 
shouted. 

"Off our nuts," growled the company 
grouch. "Talk about your holes of Cal- 
cutta!" 

"Ain't no motion," the company "boob" 
chirped. 

The old tub lurched before a sea. 

"God a'mighty, we're torpedoed!" some- 
one groaned. 

"Too bad you ain't," retorted the grouch. 

So, good-naturedly gibing, expectant and 
excited, we lay there and were carried out 
and away across the Channel toward the 
Great Adventure. And the further Eng- 
land dropped behind the rougher our lot 
became. 

"Thank God I didn't go in to be a sailor," 
came a scared voice from a corner. "Oh, 
oh, I'm sick! Oh, fellows, quit smoking!" 

Those of us who could smoke paid no 
attention, and those who were not smoking 
were too sick to notice anything else. 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



Coming down to the port, we had had 
a long march— fourteen miles— with full 
equipment and a lot of nice new clothes. 
Now, the longer a man marches, the more 
everything that he is not actually wearing 
seems perfectly useless baggage, I am 
sorry to say that Tommy and I shed on that 
long road quite a bit of stuff that cost the 
government real money. Who among the 
inhabitants of that particular bit of country 
benefited by our added comfort we didn't 
know. Furthermore, we didn't care. But 
it was very necessary, now that the march 
was over, to replenish our kit before the 
next inspection, and this seemed to be the 
right moment. 

Quietly we began to look around under 
the cloud of smoke for some one who was 
asleep or, equally good for our purpose, 
some one with that don't-care-if-I-die look, 
from which there could be no escaping. 
We found them — two chaps close together 
— and completed our kit just as our com- 

25 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



pany officer called down: ^^Kits on, boys; 
we are coming into dock." And for the 
first time in the nine months we had known 
him, his voice seemed to reflect a bit of 
excitement. 

We scrambled into our kits and up the 
stairs onto the deck, eager for the first 
glimpse of France. 

It was dark, and I don't know just what 
we had expected to see, but I was disap- 
pointed. There, in front of us, was an 
ordinary shed, lit with funny looking lamps. 
It was just such a pier shed as you will 
see in New York or Seattle. It didn't look 
at all as France should look. To me, 
France was a land of romance, a land of 
beauty and laughter and green hills and 
brilliant blue skies. I was willing to make 
some allowances for the months of war, and 
still it would fit into my dreams. But that 
old, dreary-looking, black shed spoiled 
everything. To complete the disillusion 
the sergeant bruskly asked me if I was a 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



"bloomin' Thomas Cook tourist." So I 
hustled along until I found Tommy sliding 
slowly past a French soldier. 

''Say!" he whispered. "Ain't that the 
funniest looking gink you ever saw? Look 
at that heluva bayonet, too." 

We stopped until our sergeant should 
catch up with us, and gazed at the French 
'Tommy." He was middle-aged — old, he 
seemed — and funny looking, too, as he stood 
there under a lamp with his rifle at the 
shoulder and a long thin bayonet sticking 
on the end. We grinned, and he grinned. 

"Bon jour," said Tommy, regardless of 
the fact that it was half-past two in the 
morning. 

"Hello, Tommee," was the smiling reply. 

"Holy gee! Can you beat that? He 
knows my name," said the astonished 
Tommy. 

"Come on, you men. Get out of this." 
The sergeant was back again and we could 
exchange no further amenities, but Tommy 

27 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



always believed that French Johnny knew 
his name. 

We caught up with our platoon just as it 
was being surrounded. The women of the 
place had turned out with baskets of apples 
to sell. Tommy '^bon joured" again and 
added to the Babel in the little groups we 
formed while waiting to march off. The 
French girls chatted with us in broken Eng- 
lish and we were astonished to see that they 
spoke better English than we did French. 

After a bit of puffing and panting on the 
part'of our officers we moved off, following 
a road by the river, a little, bow-legged 
Frenchman with a lantern acting as guide. 

The tramp of a thousand pair of feet on 
block paving makes quite a row and as wc 
marched along windows went up all down 
the street and all sorts of unintelligible ques- 
tions were hurled at us. It made me think 
of the ride of Paul Revere. We started to 
sing, but the colonel stopped us, and it was 
a good thing he did, for just then we turned 

28 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



a corner and saw the fellows in front grad- 
ually going into the air until we, in the rank 
behind, were looking at the backs of their 
knees. That hill is famous all through the 
army. 

^'Strike me pink!" gasped Tommy in a 
few minutes. But he couldn't say another 
word. Breathless and speechless, we strug- 
gled to the top and the camp. 

It was a canvas camp, with big oil flares 
burning for light, and the wind swept the 
flames toward us. To me it seemed as 
though great fiery arms, symbolic of what 
was waiting for us not far beyond, were 
stretched out to welcome us. Told off to 
our tents, we threw aside our packs and 
dropped down pretty much exhausted. I 
had just got nicely settled when along came 
the sergeant with his flashlight. He was 
pulling off the blanket from every head. He 
pulled off mine. 

"You're for guard. Fall in at once, light 
marching order!" 

29 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



How that man loved me! 

So it came that early morning found me 
marching up and down the edge of the hill. 
Behind me, the sun was just peeping over 
the horizon. Below, the town unfolded 
itself, the steeple of the big cathedral rising 
almost to the level of the camp. Just be- 
yond was the harbor with its mosquito fleet 
of fishing boats and the old transports that 
had brought us and some other battalions 
safely across the Channel, already taking on 
their cargo of leave men, joyfully bound for 
Blighty. Off in the distance dozens of 
locomotives, long trains of tiny cars behind 
them, were dashing here and there in an 
aimless sort of way. 

As the sun crept out it brought with it 
those energetic French women with their 
apples, chocolate and cigarettes, until the 
camp was swamped under them. Shrewd 
and sharp as a razor they were in a bargain 
and they cursed loudly and fluently in Eng- 
lish, not understanding a word of it. 

30 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



About eleven o'clock we fell in ready to 
march to the train and we had the pleasure 
of marching down that hill. As we moved 
along, the kiddies followed, singing "Tip- 
perary." It was still very much the vogue 
then. Their quaint, broken English made 
us all laugh. Every time they stopped we 
cheered and then they would start all over 
again. 

The thing that struck us most as we went 
off through the town was the amount of 
black that was worn. Even in those days 
there seemed to be scarcely a woman that 
did not carry about with her this badge of 
mourning for a man who had paid the big 
price for La Belle France. 

We were too excited, though, to pay 
much attention even to this evidence of war 
— an excitement the townsfolk did not seem 
to share. That rather disgusted us. They 
didn't even stop on the sidewalk to look as 
we marched by. It wasn't because they 
were fed up; they were just blase. If sing- 
si 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



ing troops had not marched through one 
day, and hospital trains had not come in 
one night, then great would have been the 
chatter and serious would have been the 
speculation in the cafes and on the street 
corners. 

When we got into the station we were 
halted facing our carriages. We were 
luckier than most of the battalions. We had 
passenger cars. Most of the transport con- 
sisted of the miniature freight cars. They 
started piling us in. We filled the compart- 
ments and then they began all over again 
until by comparison, sardines in a tin were 
loose in a swimming pool. 

With grunts and groans and creakings 
from the locomotive we pulled out, bound 
"up the line." We sang. We shouted greet- 
ings to everyone we passed. We threw our 
iron ration biscuits to little kiddies that 
shouted wildly after us, "Souvenir, Cana- 
dian!" We slept, ate, talked and groused, 
and still the old train rumbled along. We 

82 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



passed canals, tree-lined roads, villages, 
camps, other trains; troop trains that an- 
swered our shouts with cheers, hospital 
trains that brought us to silence because we 
were awed by the presence of men who had 
walked forward into the unknown beyond 
and had come back mutilated. 

Here and there we passed a farm with an 
old, broken-down horse and a boy working 
in a field. Again there were aged, crooked- 
backed men or women tilling the ground 
with ancient hoes, lacking even an ox. 

Finally we stopped. Our officers ran 
along the train. "All out," they shouted, 
and we scrambled down. The train puffed 
away, severing our last connection with 
Blighty. 

Again it was "fall in," again march off. 
So deadly monotonous do these calls become 
that even the glamour of France could not 
take away the monotony of them. Away 
we went, already tired after our long 
journey. 

33 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



"Where are we going?" flew up and down 
the line. 

"Somewhere in France," the grouch an- 
swered. And we plodded along in silence. 
Darkness came, and off in the distance we 
could see an occasional light twinkling. It 
seemed to be a sardonic wink. 

"Pass it back — two more kilos," came 
from the front. 

"Pass it back — what the blinking blank is 
a kilo?" was the answer. 

"Something that never ends," interjected 
the grouch. 

All things must end, though, and we 
greeted with a very feeble cheer our com- 
pany commander's order to halt and fall out 
on the side of the road. He passed through 
the gate of a farmhouse and we looked at 
it with interest. It was our first billet in 
France. We followed him through the gate 
in a few minutes and into the barn, the 
floor of which was well covered with straw. 
As we threw off our kits our officer in- 

34 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



formed us that there would be no smoking 
in the barn and that no one could leave the 
billet. 

Tommy and I, not being chosen for sentry 
go, promptly started out to find something 
to eat. Right across the road was another 
farmhouse and in we bounced. We thought 
maybe we wouldn^t understand the French 
word for "Come in" if we knocked, so we 
walked right in and were greeted by the 
grouch with "Say, fellows, whafs the 
French for meat?" Not knowing, we 
couldn't tell him, but we "bon joured" to 
madame and her family. They all "bon 
joured" to us in chorus. 

Tommy, after a terrible struggle, man- 
aged to enunciate "doo pan," and I 
pointed to my mouth. The Madame "com- 
preed" and produced a loaf of bread. 
"Beer," said Tommy, and she produced it. 
Then she turned loose a flood of French on 
Tommy. He nearly choked as it dawned 
on him that she supposed he spoke her lan- 

35 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



guage. When she stopped, he said, ^'Can 
you beat it!" and she started again. When 
she stopped for want of breath we shook 
our heads and answered ^^No compree." 
Disgusted at our limitations she retired to 
her corner and family, and Tommy, the 
grouch and I sat across the room eating our 
bread and meat and drinking our beer. 

Looking around the place I suffered 
another shock. This wasn't France ! It was 
just the kind of room you would find in any 
other part of the world and, aside from the 
tongue, we might have found the family in 
Alberta or South Dakota or Oklahoma. 

I can't tell you what I expected to find, 
but whatever it was, it wasn't there. 

When we could eat no more we laid all 
our money on the table. Madame walked 
over and picked out some. We pocketed 
the remainder, bowed, *'bon joured" and 
left. We got into billets again all right, but 
we had lost our sleeping places, so Tommy 
and I climbed into a farmer's wagon out- 

36 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



side. A good thing we did, too. Some of 
Madame's pigs got into the stable with the 
company and we awoke to a revielle of 
squealing pigs, bellowing men and voluble 
Frenchwomen. My! what a row! Madame 
was very indignant for a while over the 
treatment her pigs had received but she soon 
got over it. Those pigs were destined to 
cause more trouble, however. 

After a two days' rest we prepared to 
march on "up the line," and it was then 
one of the pigs and one of the officers elected 
to send us away with a grin. We had 
fallen in by platoons in the farmyard and 
had passed inspection. We were standing 
at ease, our officer in front of, and in the 
center of, his platoon. (That sounds Irish 
but it isn't.) Now, British army regula- 
tions prescribe that when a soldier stands 
at ease he shall carry his right foot twenty- 
seven inches to his right, with hands clasped 
behind his back when he has no rifle and not 
move or talk. Eyes must be front. Our 

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OVER THERE AND BACK 



officer, being an officer, was doing all this 
in most rigid compliance with regulations. 
Of course, he had to be an example to the 
platoon. 

Then, without warning, along came a 
pig, full of grunts and hunger. He passed 
down the front of our line. Not liking our 
looks, he right-turned and started away, 
and the only way he could pick out to evade 
us was between our officer's legs. He got 
his head through, but found then that 
twenty-seven inches was not enough for the 
rest of him. Before the officer had time to 
think, the pig gave a loud "eee," started 
double quick and the officer sat on the ani- 
mal's back. This not only annoyed but it 
frightened the pig so it became a third rate 
imitation of a bucking broncho. In two 
bucks our young commander was on his 
nose in the dirt and the pig ran squealing 
away. 

We laughed. We yelled. Then we were 
disciplined for it. But we were on the last 

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long leg of our nine months' trip from Van- 
couver to the trenches and the picture of 
the officer and the pig helped us mightily 
through that day's march and many another 
one. And that, you may agree, was worth 
the punishment. 



II 



We were in France! No one could deny 
it, especially when we tried to buy anything 
in the shops. Yet, marching along the 
roads, rows of tall, straight poplars on either 
side and a wonderful blue sky overhead, 
it seemed hard to realize we were in the 
heart of grim, hideous WAR. We were 
too far behind the lines yet to see anything 
of the war as it was, but that night we heard 
the guns for the first time. It was a dull 
and far-distant booming that caught a keen 
ear or two in the ranks and then in a few 
minutes we all were hearing it. If we 
hadn't been in France we might have put it 
down as the low rumbling of thunder as 
we hear it in the States during a late sum- 
mer's shower. 

But we were in France, and we knew! 
And strange to relate, it made us happy. I 
don't think there was a man among us whose 

40 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



heart didn't beat a little faster and his breath 
come a little quicker at the nearness of that 
which we had come over seas to find. So 
we cheered, and sang ourselves to sleep, and 
wakened often in the night anxious for the 
morning and movement. 

Daylight found us on our way again and 
soon we ran into all the activity of behind 
the lines — that army that keeps the fighting 
army fit for the fight: horses, wagons, motor 
trucks, automobiles, ambulances, puffing 
engines with their queer little trains along- 
side piles of coal, piles of shells, hay, grain, 
ammunition, meat — everything one could 
think of, and all in what seemed to be a 
hopeless confusion. 

All these things disentangled themselves 
regularly every day and were sent away up 
the line so the troops in the trenches could 
carry on. But as we went along we were 
smothered in the dust of motor trucks 
speeding by with every conceivable thing 
a great army needs and others coming back 

41 



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empty for more. Always it was more, more, 
more! Just as though some insatiable mon- 
ster was up there in front. 

Sandwiched between the motor trucks 
were the horse transports, with the great, 
soft-eyed horses plodding stolidly along 
looking at us as we passed and wondering 
what it was all about. They were passed 
on the road by the lighter and more frisky 
artillery teams drawing their little guns. 
White with dust and driven by cocky 
youngsters full of pride in themselves, 
horses and drivers seemed to sense their 
superiority over the less agile transport 
service. 

Swinging in and out through all the line 
went the ambulances — going ''up" for those 
who had ''copped" it during the night. All 
traffic gave way to them. On the "up" trip 
they were out to shatter all the speed laws, 
but on the trip "down," curtains fastened 
taut at the back, they were driven with a 
skill that would make an ex-taxi chauffeur 

42 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



turn in his grave; driven v^ith a skill born 
of the knowledge of the suffering caused 
inside by needless bumps and jolts. We sent 
many glances after them, for we knew that 
those men, hidden away from our sight, a 
few hours before had been where we would 
be in a few hours more. 

We marched that day round-eyed with 
wonder at all the things we saw. The very 
magnitude of it appalled us. Dimly we 
began to realize what a very small part of 
it we were, after all. And the realization 
did us a great deal of good. 

Late that evening we arrived at a camp 
about seven miles behind the line. We were 
fearfully tired, but we were gloriously 
happy. Then the next day it rained, and 
our spirits drooped. At five o'clock that 
afternoon we were ordered to fall in outsde 
our huts. We fell in and there, standing on 
an old ration box in the pouring rain was 
the general who at that time commanded 
the Canadian Expeditionary Force. With 

43 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



no great coat or protection of any kind, he 
stood there and talked to us. There were 
no heroics; just a plain statement in the 
simplest of terms. We were to take over 
trenches that night, he said, and he told us 
what to expect and what we were to do. 
It made a great impression on all of us and 
we cheered like mad as the general left with 
our colonel by his side. He took with him 
our hearts and our allegiance as he had done 
with the first division. 

In a few minutes the huts housed a mass 
of chattering, swearing, sweating humanity. 
Every man was trying vainly to shove into 
corners where there was no room, things 
that never should have been brought along 
— and we were to march off in an hour. It 
certainly was an active hour, but at its end 
we were on our way to the trenches, five 
rounds in the magazine of our rifles, not 
for target practice this time. Wc were 
going out to kill ! 

As I remember, I was not excited, but I 

44 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



was expectant and eager to be in a first line 
trench and see for myself all those things 
we had been hearing about during our 
months of training. 

Silently we marched through a pitch- 
black night. Two ruined villages loomed 
up in our path like ghosts in a graveyard. 
At last we were in a trench; a communi- 
cation trench leading to the front line. We 
walked and walked, winding in and out, 
with now and then a flare shooting up from 
the Boches or from our lines. Sometimes 
they seemed right over us, but they were 
not, for we caught not even a trace of their 
glow. Then they would appear off in the 
distance until we had to look twice to be 
sure they were not shooting stars. 

Sometimes we were squeezed tightly 
against the mud walls. 

Here and there we found spaces with 
room for four men to pass abreast, and still 
we walked, and cursed, because we were 
dead tired. It was midnight and the rou- 

45 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



tine of man's normal life said we should be 
in bed. We had not yet taught nature she 
was wrong. 

With whispered injunctions to keep quiet 
and stoop low, which we did to the amuse- 
ment of the fellows we were relieving, we 
arrived in the front line. 

Of course my sergeant friend took me! 
As soon as we were in the fire trench I was 
told off to stand sentry. The man I was to 
relieve whispered what I was to do and 
climbed up on the firing step with me. I 
fixed my bayonet, released the safety catch 
on my rifle, and I was helping to guard the 
world from the mad puppies on the other 
side of the wire. 

Here and there a gun boomed; big, little 
and medium sized, but none sounded near 
us, and I began to think it was a pretty 
good game. Then I looked out over the 
parapet. Something was moving out there! 
Maybe the Germans had heard us making 
the relief and were going to come out and 

46 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



throw bombs at us. I had heard they did 
that to new troops and it seemed to me they 
could not have avoided knowing we were 
new 'uns. 

I looked again, and I was sure there were 
hundreds of them. I blazed away into the 
center of them. I emptied the magazine 
and then ducked behind the parapet to re- 
load. Visions of a V. C. for repelling an 
attack single handed came suddenly before 
me. 

They were still there, but they seemed to 
have hesitated right in the middle of No 
Man's Land. That was to be their fatal 
mistake. I unloaded my next five rounds, 
rapid, and once more dropped back to 
throw in more cartridges. 

Then such a bang! Something hit the 
parapet in front of me with a crack and a 
Boche flare went up. So did my head. I 
was going to empty my last five rounds into 
Fritz if it was the last thing I did in my 
life. I put two rounds by the flare of that 

47 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



light into the stakes supporting our wire 
and then I quit. I was attracting too much 
unfavorable notice from the other side of 
the wire. When my relief came along I 
told him of my mistake and advised him to 
let the wire stakes stand as they were. 

Daybreak brought us "stand to" and a 
full picture of the mud and glory into 
which we had come. Our stomachs being 
empty, though, with rations in our haver- 
sacks, we ate and for a few minutes, forgot. 

A little sun, struggling through dirty 
gray Flanders clouds, cheered us a bit and 
we sat squat and hunched in various shapes 
wondering what the day would bring. 

The day sentry, standing on the firing 
platform, slipped and slid into our midst 
at the bottom of the trench. We laughed, 
thinking he had missed his footing on the 
slimy platform. But even as we laughed 
the sound froze on our lips and the mirth 
in our hearts. No man dropped his rifle 
and fell huddled like that on his neck, just 
for fun. His face lay up to the sun he had 

48 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



seen for the last time. In the center of his 
forehead was a little round hole. 

We all jumped from him. I can confess 
it — we were frightened. It was death star- 
ing at us and we all were strangers to him. 
It was the first of our thousand men who 
came over seas to fight God's battles, to 
reach the end of all journeys, and it brought 
us to with a shock. 

Since that day more than fourteen thou- 
sand have passed through the old battalion 
to keep it up to its strength and we who are 
left have seen Death in all his hideous 
forms. We are not calloused, we are not 
unmindful, but no longer are we afraid. 
We have discovered there are worse things 
in life than Death and many a one of us 
has had abundant cause to envy our first 
pal to "go west." 

One of the boys, bolder than the rest, 
straightened the body on the floor of the 
trench. Another mounted sentry and a third 
went to report to our officer. 

We had been "blooded!" A second's 

49 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



curiosity, he had taken one peep over the 
top in daylight, and he had paid. Curi- 
osity is paid for dearly in all that vast region 
known as "the front," and the first lesson 
of fresh troops is to curb it. 

Our officer came. Paybook and personal 
belongings were taken from the pockets to 
send to the folks at home. His ammunition, 
rifle and equipment went to the rear, to the 
dump, for someone else to use. It was war, 
and he was finished. We covered the face 
and body with a blanket and my mind flew 
back, across the Channel, England, the 
great Atlantic and Canada to the Pacific 
coast; a little town on the Fraser river, 
where a mother would soon be bowed with 
grief. 

I had known the boy and his mother. I 
had eaten and slept in their home. I knew 
the grief that would be hers and the pride 
there would be in her heart, too. Her John! 
Her boy, that she had raised and loved, had 
died fighting for his country! 

While it would be a bitter blow, what 

50 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



more could a real mother ask than to be the 
mother of a real man? She had told him 
when she said good-bye: ^Tou are all my 
heart, Johnny. If you come back, I will 
be proud and happy. If you don't come 
back, well — I will be proud." 

Thus did this mother of Canada give her 
son to the empire. 

We kept the body by us to bury when 
darkness should hide us from the enemy 
and I went on sentry with it lying just below 
me. The feet stuck out from under the 
blanket and they fascinated me. I could 
not keep my eyes away. I tried to think and 
couldn't. Twelve hours before he had been 
alive! A month before I had met him on 
leave in London. A year before he had 
been at home, never dreaming of war. Now 
he was dead ! He knew what I wanted to 
know; what everyone, sometime, wants to 
know. 

Two hours watching those feet made me 
a fatalist. 

Night came, and with it the padre to 

51 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



bury the first of his charges. We had sewed 
the body in the blanket as well as we could 
and we carried it about five hundred yards 
behind the line and dug a shallow grave. 
At nine o'clock a few of us who were not 
working quietly filed down the trench and 
there, with a dozen men kneeling round the 
grave, the flares going up and down, the 
rattle of the machine guns and the deep- 
toned roar and hiss of the big guns singing 
a requiem, we left him. 

It was well it was dark. My eyes were 
wet and I knew the others' were, as our old 
padre read the burial service from memory 
in a soft, low voice, and six of us pushed the 
dirt back into the hole wijh our intrenching 
tools. 

Moving slowly away our minds inevit- 
ably framed the question: "Who will be the 
next?" And for a time we wondered, and 
maybe worried. The days were coming soon, 
although we didn't know it then, when there 
would be plenty of casualties — hundreds 

52 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



and thousands of them — but no such burial 
as our first had received. Hell fire was to 
come, blasting us with its fury, turning over 
ground, killing and maiming, burying and 
digging up again, stifling us with putrid 
fumes and giving us no rest. It was to make 
boys of twenty into men of forty in less than 
that number of hours, but it was to purify 
and sanctify them in the process. It was to 
make heroism a commonplace. 

But we didn't know what was to come, 
and with the resiliency of youth, we once 
more were smiling and happy. 



53 



Ill 



"Battalion is warned for relief." 

So shouts the company sergeant major, 
and we groan. It means we are going into 
the trenches for another tour of duty while 
the other fellows come out and rest. It 
also means no one can move further than a 
couple of hundred yards from billets until 
it is time for the march up and that will be 
within twenty-four hours. 

More than that, it starts some terribly 
heated arguments among the men as to who 
will be in the firing line and who in sup- 
ports. There are caustic comments con- 
cerning the political influences of some pla- 
toons that speak for the support line and 
they, in turn, chide the bloodthirsty ten- 
dencies of the other platoons. 

There is no end to the argument until 
one of three things happens : a meal arrives, 
a parade is called, or the estaminet opena. 

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Then the warring factions call it off and 
concentrate their attention, if so be, on the 
meal or the estaminet. Parades? Well, 
they've got to be done so they are done, but 
not, I am afraid, with the concentration de- 
voted to the other two. 

The last night before going in every man 
Jack tries to spend all his cash, if by any 
chance there is any left after a week in 
billets. But if there is none in some pockets 
there is sure to be plenty in others, and the 
boys who are broke are perfectly willing to 
help their more affluent comrades reduce 
their surplus. 

It is so foolish to go into the trenches 
with money in your pocket. In fact, it isn't 
done. It is such an absurd waste. A fellow 
might get blown up, then no one could 
spend it. If you're killed with a bullet, 
somebody else will spend it. If worst comes 
to the worst and the Boches grab you, they 
could spend it. 

So take no chances. Spend it yourself 

55 



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and go in with empty pockets. That is the 
philosophy of the front. 

"Crown and Anchor" is in progress in 
the huts for the benefit of the draft men 
just out. Poor chaps ! They think they can 
buck the bank and they chuck their coins 
on "the lucky old mud hook" or something 
equally good. The banker tries to "bust" 
them before the estaminet closes, while 
three or four of the old hands look on with 
disgust — and with parched throats. Need- 
less to say both these conditions are due to 
pockets already swept clean. And who can 
blame them for being disgusted? Why 
can't the draft men take them to the estam- 
inet instead of throwing their francs away 
on a banker's game" ? 

Down the road in the estaminet the fun 
is in full swing. The last half hour before 
closing time has come and money is slip- 
ping out quickly and easily, for the mild 
Belgian and French beers have very slight 
intoxicating effect. Here and there a seri- 

56 



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ous-faced group may be sitting, talking in 
low tones, earnestly thumping with fists to 
emphasize some telling point. Madame 
glares at them. They are "na poo"; all the 
time talk, no drink. But madame has no 
suspicion that they are the great generals 
of the army, hidden behind private's tunics, 
discussing what should have been done at 
Neuve Chapelle or Loos, and that even now 
they may be planning some stupidly easy 
way to end the war. 

But not even the serious thinkers can re- 
sist the last fifteen minutes of grace and the 
place becomes a roaring, pounding mass of 
humanity, watched by madame with a 
motherly smile on her face. These are her 
boys, her "soldats," and she likes them. 
They are careless in manner and full of 
animal spirits, but this is their last night 
"out" for awhile — maybe for always. And 
she looks on with an "I knew it" expression 
in her kindly, shrewd eyes as a few glasses 
smash to the tune of her boys' farewell. 

57 



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It was a song we had picked up from no 
one knew where. It pleased us and we took 
it as our own. To privileged persons whom 
we esteemed — persons such as madame — it 
was both our salute and our good-bye, and 
as the military police came in to turn us 
out we stood on chairs and on tables and 
sang to madame. The song ran something 
like this: 

Oh, we come from the East 
And we come from the West, 
To fight for what we love the best; 
Jolly Canucks are we! 

Some of us are rich, 

Some of us are bums; 

But no one gives a damn 

For the Kaiser and all his Huns; 

Jolly Canucks are we! 

No one can call it poetry. Probably it is 
nothing at all, but we were very careful 

58 



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and very particular where we sang it and to 
whom. When we did sing it to any person 
they might well consider it the highest of 
compliments. To madame, as long as we 
stayed in the district, we sang our farewell 
every last night before we went into the 
trenches. 

Our song over this night, we went to our 
hut, which was an improvement over the 
estaminet only in that its capacity was lim- 
ited to twenty-two men. Sleep we could, 
and did, however, and with no thought of 
the morrow. 

It never failed to rain when we made a 
relief, and sure enough, next day it poured. 
It came down in sheets ! But you can't post- 
pone your relief on account of rain like you 
can a ball game, so we packed up; not a 
wardrobe trunk and handbag, but just what 
we could carry on our backs in a clever but 
fiendish device which seems to get heavier 
and heavier with every step as you go along. 
It only takes about five minutes to pack, but 

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OVER THERE AND BACK 



when you get it all on your back you look 
like a Christmas tree at a Sunday-school 
festival. 

It is a peculiar thing to pack up like this 
to move into the trenches. Will you come 
back? Will your pal? If you look around 
and study the faces you probably will not 
find a single fleeting expression to show 
what these men think and feel. Reinforce- 
ment men may display a keen curiosity and 
ask innumerable questions, but these ques- 
tions are quickly shut off by the most flip- 
pant and absurd answers. 

The old hand may indicate his feelings 
by a fervent and more or less sulphurous 
hope that he will get a "blighty" this "time 
in," but beyond that, war, to all outward 
appearances, is the least of any one's 
thoughts. At times like this, and just be- 
fore an attack, you always believe — in fact 
you are absolutely sure — it is someone else 
who will "get it." 

All packed up and with the midday 

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meal over we lay around waiting for 
two o'clock. It comes all too quickly 
and the sergeant calls through the door: 
"Fall in on the road, No. i platoon." 
We heave our kits into place and move 
out into the driving rain. We fall in 
on a wet, slippery cobblestone road. There 
is a lot of pushing and shoving as we get 
into place and then there is dead silence. 

The roll is called, the C. O. appears from 
nowhere, takes the sergeant's report of "all 
present," gives the command "Right turn, 
quick march," and we start off. 

What luck we are in for now no one 
knows or cares. Our immediate problem is 
wrestling with fifty pounds on the back and 
a wet, slippery, slimy road, and if you will 
believe me, it is some wrestling match ! We 
skate more than we march, with every now 
and then someone going "crash!" rifle one 
way, body another, much to the amusement 
of his pals and the detriment of his own 
morals. 

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Then comes a shout from up ahead, 
*^Keep to the right," and we ease off to the 
side of the road while a big motor truck 
lumbers by, splashing mud aplenty over all 
of us. Then the whole platoon breaks out 
in language that would put a Washington 
logger to shame. Another goes by filling 
our eyes and mouths with liquid mud, and 
our rage sends us into shrieks, but still 
another and another chug past, each driven 
by some self-satisfied young chauffeur 
whose greatest delight is to annoy us and 
start our flow of profanity. By his side sits 
his fat helper. Both have broad grins on 
their faces and they seem to say: "Fools, 
why didn't you join our branch of the ser- 
vice, and you'd never have to walk?" 

They disappear to the rear and our curs- 
ings die away in mutterings, as we must 
save our breath to help us over the roads. 
So, silently we trudge along in the rain and 
the gathering gloom. For a moment we envy 
those men on the lorries and frankly confess 

6^ 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



it to ourselves, yet in the next moment we 
are fiercely proud that we are the infantry, 
the foot sloggers that live in the mud and 
muck of the trenches. 

Dirty we may be, and full of ^'cooties," but 
we are the boys who clinch the argument 
and we are fighting proud of our three year 
traditions and the hundreds of years' old 
traditions of the French and British in- 
fantry by whose side we man the parapets. 
Our American doughboys will learn that 
feeling too. They will recognize that other 
branches of the service are important, yet 
they will tolerate them, and that's all. 

So we slither along and come to some bat- 
teries of artillery lining the road, the dug- 
outs for their crews near by. It is dark 
now and as it is to be a quiet night the gun- 
ners are in their shelters, but their sentries 
spot us and call to their mates, "the infantry 
is going by." Then they all come tumbling 
out to wish us good luck. They are our 
friends, if friends we have. They know it 

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and we know it. They know what we go 
through and we love them because they give 
back, shell for shell and then some for in- 
terest, every one Fritz drops onto us. We 
depend on them, and they on us. 

With much good natured bantering we 
slip through the early night toward ruin 
and desolation, and they go back to their 
warm, dry blankets. 

Now we branch off the road and take to 
the fields which will provide a short cut to 
the communication trenches. As we go 
skating over this treacherous ground we 
come to a little patch of turnips cultivated 
by the French peasants with that wonderful 
spirit which carries them right up to the 
shell zone and makes them fill in a shell 
hole in their garden and replant it. As we 
cross we stoop and pick up the turnips. Not 
bothering to peel them, we rub off the worst 
of the dirt and, still eating them, we arrive 
at another road and the entrance to the 
C.T. 

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Here we rest, lying on the road, our uni- 
forms absorbing more of the sticky mud. 
We are tired, however, so it does not mat- 
ter; not even the fact that a shell may come 
down and scatter bodies in all directions, 
souls going to their Maker even before the 
bodies come down like huge chunks of mud. 
That such a possibility exists, no one doubts, 
but no one is worried about it. 

Mud and water soon cool one and we 
show signs of restlessness. Up we get and 
in single file enter the communication 
trench, which gradually gets deeper until 
it is above our heads and we are swallowed 
in an inky blackness. The journey is nearly 
over now, except for that turning and twist- 
ing and winding in a monotonous, endless 
sort of maze, with the way lighted into day 
one minute by a flare and the next minute 
blackness more intense than ever. 

Now a man slips and falls, the next in 
file tumbling on top of him. Endless con- 
versation about the matter follows, but on 

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we go and gradually we come nearer to the 
flares and to those men who are waiting 
for us — those men who have been there for 
the last six days, answering shot for shot 
from the enemy, lying in their ditch full 
of muck and corruption, graced by the 
name of trench, while the artillery hourly 
played on and over them. For six days 
they have been there, suffering their cas- 
ualties and standing up under punishment, 
while we had our rest. Now it is their 
turn, and we hurry on that our relief will 
be on time, for in six more days they will 
relieve us and we will want them to be on 
time. 

Sweating and staggering under the 
weight of our packs we slip into our posi- 
tions. With whispered bantering and. 
"good luck, bo," they melt into the night. 
We are "in." 

We are nicely settled in our new quarters 
when dawn begins to streak the eastern sky. 
Suddenly the whole world is alight. 

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"Hey, fellows, just take a look through 
this periscope at No Man's Land. Of all 
the over-rated places in the world this has 
got 'em beat." 

That was Tommy's opinion. 

"What the did you expect to see," 

asked the grouch. 

"Well, bodies hanging in the wire to 
start with, and there ain't a one. Then 
some on the ground. But just look! There 
ain't a thing in sight!" 

We all jumped up to peep in turn and 
it was a terrible disillusionment. Abso- 
lute quiet reigned all over. Our trenches 
were situated near the top of a hill, and 
we could look back behind our front line. 
Forward we could see a hundred yards 
ahead to a wall of sandbags and dirt — the 
German parapet. 

There was not a moving thing, backward 
or ahead, except trees and grass swaying to 
a North Sea wind. The air was full of 
strange sounds ; aeroplanes on the wing, big 

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battle planes, the smaller and speedier 
scouts; the sharp crack of a rifle or the 
whine of its ricochet; the lazy roar of a 
shell that now and then came our way, in- 
creasing its roar to a scream of rage as it 
reached the end of its journey and exploded 
with a crash, throwing up dirt or man in 
a great shower. Not a living thing could 
be found on the top of the ground, though. 
To go on the surface meant you would be 
"na poo" in a second. So we sat tight in 
our trenches and looked at No Man's Land 
through a periscope. 

Imagine a river running from the North 
Sea to Switzerland. I know rivers don't 
run up hill, but just imagine it anyway, 
twisting and turning, narrowing and widen- 
ing as all rivers do. Take for the banks of 
your river the parapets of the opposing 
armies and then you have No Man's Land. 
As a river, narrowing, sends its waters rush- 
ing through the channel, so does the fight- 
ing increase where No Man's Land nar- 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



rows, until at night there is a continual flash 
over these parts. From afar you can pick 
out the narrow strips like you can pick the 
swift running parts of the river by the in- 
creasing roar of the waters. 

Where No Man's Land widens then 
there, like on a river, you find peace and 
quiet, after a fashion, and live your life 
underground as best you can, happy and 
content that you are alive. 

At night, from the rear, you can pick 
out the broader reaches of No Man's Land 
by the regular rise and fall of the flares, 
making no more noise than a river slipping 
quietly toward the sea. 

That is No Man's Land and that is why 
Tommy was disappointed. Not that 
Tommy was bloodthirsty. Far from it. 
His imagination had led him to expect 
something else; bodies, enemies and friends, 
hung in the wire, piled high on the ground. 
He had looked for and expected daily, 
even hourly, hand-to-hand conflicts with the 

69 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



Germans in which much blood would be 
spilled. Oh! the disappointment of it. 

Tommy really was disgusted, for what he 
saw through his periscope was a strip of 
land about a hundred and twenty yards 
wide, exactly the same as any other strip 
of land a hundred and twenty yards wide, 
only at the other side was a wall of sand- 
bags and dirt three or four feet high. 

'Wonder if ours looks like that," thought 
Tommy out loud. 

"Go out and see, you fool," said 

the grouch, which was the start of a local 
engagement right then and there, and I 
managed to get the periscope. I wanted 
to see a German. We had been in the 
trenches for nearly three months, off and on, 
and had suffered some casualties; not many 
— but none of us had seen a German yet. 

No Man's Land wasn't worth looking at. 
It was the same old story. There was wire 
to start with; plenty of it. I have often 
wondered how many thousands of miles of 

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OVER THERE AND BACK 



wire must have been used up to now. After 
our wire, more land, then German wire. 
Rusty, lifeless, stupid looking stuff, it has 
cost more in money, men, time and material, 
to destroy and put up than any agent of war 
except old Wilhelm der Grosse. 

It is partly covered by the tall grass 
which grows around it, mercifully covering 
other things as well; men who have given 
their bodies to their king and country, lay- 
ing there forgotten except by their families 
and the pals they soldiered with. Thank 
Heavens the tall grass does mercifully cover 
up this, and only fools try to uncover it. 

We once found two shoes standing to- 
gether pointing forward. Inside were the 
ankle and foot bones of the man who had 
left them there. We found them on the 
ground of what is now one of the famous 
earlier engagements of the war. They 
were a Frenchman's, size six, slightly torn. 
What a story they told to the glory of 
France; the wonderful spirit and patriotism 

71 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



that has carried her through all her 
troubles. He was a little man, possibly a 
Parisian, small and debonnair, proud of his 
dainty feet, so neat, nay almost chic. And 
then — ^war, bloody, thunderous war. Gone 
at once was the little man's pride in his feet. 
Gone were his boulevard ambitions. Si- 
lently he slipped away from his beloved 
Paris. A silent and fervent handshake here 
and there, then the depot, then, the turning 
point. 

The French advanced. The British ad- 
vanced. The Germans retreated. And 
then he met his fate, leaving there his little 
feet. Where the rest of him went heaven 
only knows. He died, though, happy — 
very happy — going forward. He died as 
thousands of others have died, thinking 
they were winning the great victory. They 
were, but the victory still is in the future. 
We all go on, though, always thinking it 
will soon end, hardly caring to credit the 
German with the savagery, cunning and 

72 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



deceit that time after time he has disclosed 
to the world. He laughs at us and carries 
on. 

And let me say now that unless we take 
off our gloves to handle Mr. Boche, our 
whole country will be No Man's Land. 
And that wouldn't be nice! 

Tommy and the grouch finished their ar- 
gument and clamor for the periscope. 
Finally they get it. All day long we look 
for the Boche and never see him. Hiding 
ourselves behind the trench walls, some of 
us fling trench mortar bombs across the way 
while the others watch the air. When a 
black object is discovered tumbling over 
and over as though the very air were loath 
to hold it, there is a shout, ''bomb right," 
"left" or "center," as the case may be. And 
everyone scuttles for cover. In a second 
there is a grand crash, then silence, and we 
come out again. 

It's a good game if they don't come too 
fast! 

73 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



A Canadian, I don't know who, one day 
decided he didn't like the phrase No Man's 
Land. It didn't sound right. It seemed to 
put the Boche on a level with us and that 
was an insult to all white men. The Cana- 
dians had always fought fair, and like real 
sportsmen. In short, the Canadians re- 
named No Man's Land ^^CANADA," and 
wherever they go they dare the Boche to 
step over his parapet and dispute the fact. 

At night, everything is changed. Ground 
that was deserted by day teems with ac- 
tivity. Men come and go in large and small 
parties; behind the lines for rations, water, 
mail and the thousand and one things that 
are necessary to trench life; in front of the 
lines for adventure, for work, and to meet 
whatever the night may bring. 



74 



IV 



It rather got on our nerves, this going up 
to the line and going back again. We had 
about decided all we were going to see of 
the war was a couple of mud and sandbag 
walls and some rusty wire. Just now we 
were back in billets and were due for an- 
other trip in. We were supposed to march 
up the next day and everybody was grousing 
when the whole battalion was paraded and 
the sergeant major read an order. 

"The following men will report to Lieu- 
tenant ," it ran. 

Then followed a list of names, quite a 
few altogether, and mine was among them. 
We were to stay out of the line this time 
and practice for a raid! 

In five minutes we were the heroes of the 
battalion. Nothing was too good for us. 
Down at the estaminet, where we foregath- 
ered immediately, we had everything in the 

75 



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house and it didn't cost us a centime. We 
were to be the first of our lot to meet the 
enemy hand to hand and the boys were de- 
termined to make it the cause of a celebra- 
tion. 

It was now nearly four months that we 
had been in Belgium. We had worked until 
we nearly dropped trying to beat the mud 
to it, and keep our trenches in shape. As 
fast as we built, however, just a little faster 
had our walls slid in on us until some of 
us had been nearly drowned in the stuff. 
We had been on working parties in No 
Man's Land and we were in the way of 
being veterans, yet never a German had we 
seen, except one or two dead ones lying 
out between the lines. We had thought 
once or twice we had seen some at night — 
huge shapes moving silently and mysteri- 
ously in front of their wire — but face to face 
with them we had never been, and we 
wanted to be! Now our chance was 
coming. 

76 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



The younger men in the battalion looked 
on us with awe and admiration, the older 
members with envy, and we, modest heroes, 
strutted the street and pretended to see no 
one but our own band of picked braves. 
In the estaminet we sat in little groups whis- 
pering by ourselves when the celebration 
had died down for want of francs to keep it 
alive. 

Men asked us questions, we looked su- 
perior, answered evasively and they walked 
away more impressed than ever. It was 
a great life! 

Our lieutenant soon got us busy, though, 
working for the great night which had been 
set about a week later. During the first 
couple of days we worked in daylight get- 
ting our formations, learning what we were 
to do and how we were going to do it. There 
was one thing we were going to do, and th^t 
was get rid of a trench mortar which always 
pounded blazes out of our parapet. The 
Germans who ran that thing didn't know it, 

77 



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but their time was running short, which 
simply goes to show how really little mor- 
tal man knows as to when his end is coming. 

So we went over the ground in daylight, 
threading our way through lanes of wire, 
throwing dummy bombs, jumping into a 
trench, running to certain places in it to look 
for things we hoped to find. Among them 
were entrances to dugouts, machine gun em- 
placements, and that cursed trench mortar, 
which daily sent its ^^minnies" whining 
through the air. When we found these 
places in our imagination, we did things 
which, being well done, are certain to do 
away with just those things we intended to 
eliminate. 

Again, we would simply walk over the 
ground, memorizing every little detail, for 
we were keen that our raid should be a 
success. Then we finished our work by day 
and turned night into day. All day we 
would lay in billets, sleep, eat, write letters 
and think of the fellows who had gone to 

78 



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the line. Life was good to us. Here we 
were, lounging around with nothing to do 
until night; so we stretched, yawned, and 
went to sleep again. 

After supper, though, we would pile out, 
march quietly across to a nearby field, and 
line up in our formation ready to move. 
A word whispered up and down the line, 
"All right, boys," and then our officer 
would slip away in the darkness, all of us 
after him, each to his task. And those tasks 
were many and varied. German wire had 
to be cut — ^we couldn't expect that to be 
done for us — a party had to look for dug- 
outs and prisoners; another had to search 
for our hated enemy, the trench mortar; 
another, machine guns; still another must 
help back our wounded; on all of us rested 
the responsibility of getting back our own 
killed, but we didn't think about that. 
There weren't going to be any. 

Away we went, crawling through the 
darkness toward our objective. It was al- 

79 I 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



most as exciting as the real thing. Of 
course, we reached our objective. No trouble 
at all. We destroyed everything in sight, 
brought back about a hundred prisoners, 
suffered no casualties, and turned into our 
strav^ just as daylight broke. 

So we went on till the last night, when 
we tried it carrying any weapons we wanted. 
One fellow was a butcher. He carried a 
cleaver. Another was an old British Co- 
lumbia logger. He had a hand ax. Another 
was a lather. He had a lathing hatchet. 
Some carried bayonets in their puttees. 
Others carried revolvers and everybody car- 
ried bombs. Captain Kidd's crew would 
have looked like a lot of nursery pirates 
compared to us, but as is generally the case, 
our bark was worse than our bite. We 
lacked the bloodthirsty spirit, but we were 
keen to make good, which helped a lot. 

The last practice augured badly for Mr. 
Fritz. Everything went like clockwork. 
We must have killed a million Boches that 
night as we worked away at our job, and 

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OVER THERE AND BACK 



away in the distance we could hear our 
artillery firing in bursts of rapid fire. It 
was nearly time for the game to start. 

As we walked back to billets in the early 
morning light, we were excited. To-night 
would tell the tale. We never worried about 
ourselves. We wanted the excitement of 
the thing. It was for our battalion, for the 
Canadians, that we worried. Would we 
make a good job of it? Good enough to re- 
flect credit on the rest of the troops? That 
is what worries the "Tommy"; his regi- 
ment. Rather would he die than disgrace 
that. 

We tumbled into bed to sleep until noon. 

"All out for dinner, fellows," and we 
scrambled out of our straw for a hot meal. 
Our lieutenant came around and told us we 
would fall in at three o'clock ready to move 
off. All soon enough the hour came and 
we fell in. Our officer inspected us and we 
moved away. Excited? Well, I should 
say so ! 

I kept wondering how it would feel to 

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Stick a Boche. It wasn't exactly like killing 
another man, but I wondered if I could do 
it, and tried to imagine it. I couldn't, so 
I stopped thinking about it. One fellow 
expressed the feelings of us all. 

^^I'm glad it's going to be dark, fellows. 
I hate those devils, but they look like human 
beings, even if they ain't," he said. 

With that we passed the whole thing out 
of our minds and sang "Never trouble 
trouble till trouble troubles you," to relieve 
our feelings. And we went blithely on our 
way. 

At seven thirty we found ourselves in the 
front line trench, in my own company sec- 
tor, and that very trench mortar we were 
going over for had blown in two of the dug- 
outs during the afternoon. 

"Get those things to-night if you get noth- 
ing else," our company commander said, 
and we agreed to do it. As our dugouts 
were blown in we had to sit in the trench 
and as we sat there, word was passed quietly 
down the line "friendly patrol out." 

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OVER THERE AND BACK 



Our wire cutters had gone out, and our 
adventure was started. When they came 
back, if they did come back, then it would 
be our turn. 

Wire cutting is no easy job and takes a 
long time. The fellows go out and crawl 
through lanes in our own wire and on out 
to the German wire. They carry wire cut- 
ters and wear special gloves. It is hard 
work and ticklish from the time they start 
at the outer edge of the German wire until 
they finish at the inner edge. This gener- 
ally is about ten yards from the enemy 
parapet. 

It calls for real nerve. The fellows crawl 
to the point at which they intend to cut 
through, take hold of a strand with their 
cutters, place a heavily-gloved hand over 
the whole thing, and then press down. It 
is an anxious second. Will it make a 
noise? No, not this time an5rway. The 
cutters sink through the strand quietly and 
cleanly and the man pulls back one more 
strand out of the way. But never must he 

83 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



be pleased with temporary success and make 
a false move. Just one slip, just one little 
piece of carelessness, and the whole thing is 
ruined. 

Failure, for those men out there, means 
almost certain death and a swift one. They 
will see for the space of a second the flash 
of a machine gun or bomb. They will see 
it for just a second, then they will pass away 
and beyond. Those who stayed in the 
trenches will see in the morning a few fig- 
ures lying in and around the German wire. 
That is failure. The raid is recalled and it 
is impossible to carry it out for a few days, 
as Fritz will flood No Man's Land at night 
with flare lights until it is like daytime. 

If we can judge by flares to-night, how- 
ever, we are not to have a failure. They 
only go up now and then, with their usual 
regularity. Mr. Boche suspects nothing, 
and we chuckle with delight. While we 
chuckle we rub our hands and faces with 
a mixture of charcoal and grease paint, plas- 
tering it all over our skin, much to the 

84 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



amusement of everybody. It is a good pro- 
tection, though. While we are rubbing it 
in, our brigadier comes up with part of his 
staff. With him also is our colonel. They 
both shake hands with us and wish us luck, 
then pass on to the company headquarters 
to wait till the raid is over. They are 
anxious, too, to see what luck we have. And 
all blackened up like a minstrel first part 
we sit snickering and chattering. 

The butcher fingers his cleaver lovingly 
and the logger practices throwing his ax 
into the wall of the trench opposite as we 
wait for the wire cutters to come back. 
They have been out a little more than four 
hours now and it is nearly time for them to 
report in. While we are talking in whis- 
pers, they return, all except two or three 
who are left to guard the lanes they have 
cut, and we move off to the spot from which 
we will leave our parapet. The signaling 
station gets in touch with the artillery and 
we crawl out into "Canada." 

Now a fellow may feel very brave when 

85 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



he is in a trench, but once you get outside 
it is all different. As we left our parapet 
and dropped down in front waiting for the 
rest to come out and get into position it 
seemed to me that both those parapets rose 
to a tremendous height, so high that we 
would never be able to climb over either 
one of them again. A flare went up from 
the enemy line and I was confident they 
could see us. Every place of concealment 
seemed to vanish at the same second and 
nothing was left for cover but skinny little 
twigs here and there. And then the word 
was whispered, ^'lead on." 

Some of the fellows who had been cut- 
ting the wire were preceding us as guides. 

I had elected to take a rifle with me and 
as I dragged it along I thought of the old 
stories I had read as a boy of Buffalo Bill, 
and almost laughed out loud when I re- 
membered one in which the old scout had 
shot and then scalped seventeen Indians in 
one fight. Luckily I caught myself just in 

86 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



time, and concentrated all my attention to 
crawling. How I hated those cursed flares, 
though. Every now and then they would go 
sailing fifty or sixty feet into the air with 
their hissing noise and we would freeze to 
the ground. 

We didn't dare look up to see where it 
was going to light. We didn't dare move, 
and as I lay there, my heart beating so hard 
it almost caused the earth to tremble, I 
imagined that ball of fire was going to light 
in the middle of my back. 

I remembered the story of the little Spar- 
tan boy who had taken the fox to school and 
let it gnaw his breast away, and I won- 
dered if I could lie still and let that light 
burn through my back without shrieking. 
But I decided I might just as well yell, 
as the Boches would smell me burning and 
suspect something anyway. Then the light 
landed — but not on me — died out with a 
splutter, and we crawled forward again. 

A few yards nearer — it is getting mighty 

S7 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



exciting now. We are passing through their 
wire. Right ahead is their parapet, a wall 
of mud. Not a sign of a living being. We 
might as well have been alone in the world. 
It is fascinating sport. Just on the other 
side, only a few yards away, is the enemy, 
and he is due for an awful fright in a few 
seconds. 

At that instant a flare shoots up, so close 
to us we can see the sparks from the dis- 
charge. We flatten ourselves, hoping the 
ground will swallow the lot. But even as 
the flare exploded the air became full of a 
roaring noise, ending with a crash in front 
of us. Our box barage had opened. The 
timing was perfect. We were in luck and 
Mr. Boche was out of it, for we were in 
that trench before he had time to wink. 

The one who sent up that flare — ^well, he 
never knew what hit him. The logger 
mounted the parapet just where the flare 
had gone up. 

Don't ask me what I thought as we 

88 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



jumped in. I don't know. The whole 
thing was a blaze of color, a crash of shells 
and German S. O. S. signals in the air, as 
I made for the trench mortar. My mind 
centered on that one thing in front of me, 
somewhere in that trench. I merely felt 
the presence of those two trench walls. 
Dimly, vaguely, I knew I was in the Ger- 
man lines, and believe me or not, a great 
feeling of joy surged over me. Mad ex- 
citement possessed me and all around the 
roar and crash of artillery added to it when, 
Heavens! There was a German, right at 
the corner of a traverse. He was helmet- 
less and without a rifle, but worse yet, he 
was carrying one of their stick bombs. 

It flashed into my mind, "you or he. Not 
you!" and I jumped for him. 

Before he could pull the string on that 
bomb we went to the bottom of the trench 
together. It was rotten, but the instinct of 
self preservation is always uppermost in the 
human mind. 

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Before I could get up, the other fellows 
rushed over me, headed for the trench mor- 
tar, and then I ran after them. 

Don't think I forgot that German. I 
never have, and I never will. A memory 
is one of the curses on those who indulge 
in war. 

Then, though everything was confusion, 
instinctively I went where I should have 
gone. Instinctively all of us did what we 
were trained to do. 

The trench mortar was destroyed effi- 
ciently, when a green light flashed up into 
the night. It was our signal to return, and 
we started back the way we had come. We 
passed some engineers standing at some dark 
shafts which went down into the ground. 
The stairs led into German dugouts, and 
just as we passed there was a mufiled roar, 
the earth heaved for a second, then subsided 
again and the staircase disappeared. 

We ran on until we saw our officer stand- 
ing above us. He reached down his hand, 

90^ 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



we grasped it, and he helped us out, saying 

as he did, "Got six of the Boches. 

Scoot for home." And we scooted. 

There another officer was waiting, jump- 
ing up and down with excitement. At the 
same time he was trying to take down our 
names as we reported in. 

"Got six prisoners. Report at battalion 
headquarters in reserve," he told us as he 
continued his jumping up and down. 

Away we went down the trench, happy — 
nervously happy, so that we spoke in an 
unnatural tone. We had been in hand-to- 
hand conflict with the enemy and had not 
been afraid. That was what pleased us the 
most. We had met our crisis and come 
through without flinching and with credit 
to ourselves, our battalion, and if you want 
to carry it that far, to our country. And by 
good, clean, fair methods of fighting. 

By the time we entered headquarters nor- 
mal feeling took possession of us and we 
swanked. 

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The brigadier and the colonel were there 
and shook hands again with each one of us. 
Then while we waited for the rest of our 
crowd to come in the men in reserve gath- 
ered tightly about us. ''Did you kill any- 
body?" "How does it feel?" "Did you get 
any souvenirs?" "What were their trenches 
like?" and a million other questions that we 
couldn't answer. 

Our officer came in and reported to the 
general "all in, sir. One casualty, Private 
. Six prisoners captured, one ma- 
chine gun destroyed, enemy trench mortar 
emplacement gone." 

"Very good work, sir. Take your men 
to billets. I congratulate you all," said the 
general. 

We marched away, a weird looking lot. 
The sweat running off our faces had left 
streaks of dirty grey on them. Our hands 
and clothes were masses of mud. The 
butcher was gone, he and his cleaver. It is 
he who was the casualty. He had gone mad 

92 



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with excitement and chased a Boche, still 
madder with excitement, into the edge of 
our barrage, just as a shell exploded. For 
a second their figures had been silhouetted 
in the flame, then blackness. Now as we 
trooped away from headquarters to our de- 
tail camp the line we had left was a crash- 
ing mass of shells. All our batteries were 
firing and the Germans were retaliating on 
our lines so that over it all hung a glare as 
of a city afire. We, however, satisfied with 
ourselves, turned our heads from it and our 
thoughts toward billets. 



93 



The Bullring was not a jaunting place 
for matadors. Far from it. It was as 
bloody, though, as a Spanish arena after a 
matinee. It was a bit of badly mussed 
ground toward which our friend Fritz, 
across the wire, with malicious intent, dis- 
charged men, bullets, gas, grenades and 
bombs of all sizes and descriptions up to 
and including ^'Minnies" and ^'sausages." 
And we didn't have to wave a red flag for 
them either. 

It also received shells of all calibres and 
from all ranges, not to mention the constant, 
undivided attention of a highly skilled lot 
of snipers who patiently waited until some 
of our people worked up a fatal curiosity 
for "just one second's peep over." 

In return for all this we discharged rifles, 
machine guns and bombs forward toward 

94 



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Fritz and our battered and mutilated pals 
backward, down the trail to Blighty. 

This was the Bullring— one of the many 
peculiar places on that long, sinuous line 
that stretches the hundreds of miles from 
Switzerland to the sea. There it was, and 
there it stuck, like a huge boil on a man's 
neck, running out in a half circle of about 
two hundred yards to within twenty-five 
yards of the Boches, and then dropping 
gradually back until it reached the more 
respectable distance of perhaps a hundred 
yards from our enemy. 

Here in this Bullring, in nine different 
groups of two men each, eighteen men sat 
night and day playing even a better game 
than poker. Truly enough was "the sky the 
limit." Some won, some lost. Those who 
won, after days of it, staggered out through 
the mud when relieved and made for billets 
behind the line, and rest. And they would 
think no more of the Bullring. 
Those who lost; well, some went in their 

95 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



sleep, never knowing; others, even when 
awake, went, never knowing. For the Bull- 
ring treated you well in this, that you went 
quick and sure. There was no uncertainty. 

The Bullring was so bad, in fact, that only 
the sentries lived in it. Their reliefs stayed 
a hundred yards in the rear until time for 
them to go up. The reliefs were two men 
to a post, twelve hours on and twelve hours 
off. We on the post arranged between our- 
selves how much each fellow should do. 

So, one bright night, on our next trip into 
the line, we found ourselves in this trench 
behind the Bullring, shivering with the 
cold, while our officer got us ready to go up 
and relieve the sentries on duty. We were 
to have the night shift, little Tommy and I. 
We had to take eight and nine posts, the two 
furtherest away, because we were short of 
men. 

A few minutes later, leaving our packs 
behind us and taking only haversacks, rifles 
and ammunition, Tommy and I started off 

96 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



to find eight and nine posts. We had never 
done duty here before, but we had heard of 
the place. There was not a man on our 
sector but had heard of it. 

We struggled through the mud of a com- 
munication trench until it turned off to the 
right and left. We took the turn to the left 
and passed number one post. From here on 
we stumbled along, and blacker than black 
it had become. Every so often we were 
challenged quietly, but with an intensity 
that brought a quick reply from us. It was 
all business, this close to the enemy, and no 
mistake. 

Once we stopped for breath and stood 
long enough to whisper to each other a sul- 
phuric opinion on the appearance of the 
Bullring. Parapets were down, firing plat- 
forms were down; everything was down. 
What hadn't slid in, had been blown in, and 
that not long before if we could judge by 
the smell of powder in the air. While we 
were grunting our way through a particu- 

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larly nasty spot we rounded a corner and 
were challenged for the eighth time. 

^Who's that?" 

^^Relief." 

^ What battalion?" 

'' battalion." 

"Righto, mates. Glad to see you. Did 
number eight post challenge?" 

"Thought you were number eight," we 
whispered. 

"No, I'm nine. Guess eight musta died. 
He and his partner got a ^Minnie' in there 
at ^stand to.' One snuffed right out. Other 
guy was pretty badly hit, but thought he 
could stick it till relief. War's hell, ain't 
it? My mate's in the corner there. Hogged 
one o' their bombs this afternoon. Well, so 
long, fellows. We're comin' back for those 
boys before morning." 

And he was gone, leaving us to — ^we 
couldn't see what, it was so dark. We 
waited for the enemy's flares to go up and 
show us. With the first light we saw the 

98 



OVER^THERE AND BACK 



sentry sitting in the corner, the mud reach- 
ing nearly to his shoulders. He was wait- 
ing for his pals to come and bury him, but 
they never did. Anyway, the back of the 
trench slid in on top of him a few minutes 
later and we saw him no more. 

Another flare convinced us of the impos- 
sibility of sleep, so Tommy and I agreed to 
keep watch together. Owing to the scarcity 
of labor, we decided that the best way was 
to patrol both posts, firing here and there 
between them and thus attempt to persuade 
Fritz there were lots of us waiting for him. 

We started for number eight to open our 
campaign and in going through the trench. 
Tommy's foot touched the body of one of 
the day sentries. We scratched around in 
the mud until we could get a good grip on 
his body to pull him out. It was ghastly 
work, and we shook until our teeth chat- 
tered, but we tugged and we pulled until 
we brought him to the surface. The man 
had been buried in the mud. We couldn't 

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see his face, nor where "he had got it." He 
was heavy, though, and we let him rest on 
the top of the muck until we regained our 
breath. But he started to sink again as 
though he liked the soft bed from which 
we had dragged him. So, toiling and puf- 
fing, we again caught hold and rolled him 
up, over the back of the trench, to lie there 
until we should have time to bury him. We 
looked for the other fellow, but he was 
under a pile of sandbags. He didn't hinder 
our movements and we let him be. 

Our house now was as clean as we could 
make it, and we settled down to routine. 
We moved from one point to another, 
firing, then stood in the mud shaking with 
cold, whispering to each other of friends 
who had gone, of home, or when the war 
would end. That was in 1915. We said 
the end would come in the autumn of '16. 

Everything might have been lovely in our 
garden, but even now when I think of it I 
shudder. When we searched for cigarettes, 
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they were there all right, but — oh! the 
agony of it, they were spoiled by the mud 
which had soaked through our clothes. The 
delicious, soothing consolation of a smoke 
was denied us. How it hurt! My watch 
said three o'clock. From then to morning 
without a smoke is terrible punishment 
when you are in sticky waters above your 
knees and your job needs your attention 
every minute. 

Morning came at last, however, and the 
report went in from our O. C. "Night nor- 
mal." We dropped back to our sleeping 
quarters, a tot of rum, breakfast, and a 
smoke. Then Tommy and I tumbled into 
our sandbag bedroom and the war knew us 
no more until the late afternoon. That 
found us rested and more conscious of the 
scamperings of the rats. One, nibbling at 
Tommy's shoe at the place where it covered 
his pet corn, roused him from his slumbers 
into a temper fearful to contemplate and 
that boded ill for the rat. But Tommy 

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didn't catch him, for we were both rolled 
in the same blanket. I was tossed out, how- 
ever, during his struggles to murder the 
elusive rodent. I submit that that is not 
the most pleasant way to be wakened. The 
rat was gone and Tommy was mad. I had 
lost my blanket and I was mad. We said 
many things to each other by way of break- 
fast and then sat with our backs against the 
wall, looking out through a little hole to a 
gray waste of mud and dripping water. We 
began again, almost in one breath, but this 
time we told ourselves every disagreeable 
thought we ever had had concerning the 
war and everyone having the least thing to 
do with it. 

Our speech was rudely interrupted by the 
sergeant, who put his head through a hole, 
asked us the name of our hotel, and would 
we mind going to the Bullring for duty. 
Being only privates, of course we didn't 
mind. At least, we said we didn't. Any- 
way, darkness again found us making our 
way up to the old post. 

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We arrived to find only one sentry. As 
usual, during the day his paPs bump of 
curiosity had grown larger than his bump 
of discretion, and he had ^'gone west." He 
had peeped over the top for "just one sec- 
ond." The other man had been alone with 
him for most of the day and was not loath 
to leave. 

So our night began. 

Things were quiet — it was a compara- 
tively quiet part of the line. We fired an 
occasional shot, now from here, now from 
there, and then Fritz, exasperated beyond 
control, would send over a bomb or two. 
But our luck held, and by constantly travel- 
ing back and forth we managed to dodge 
everything. 

In patroling, though, we had to continu- 
ally pass the dead sentry, and in all the 
blackness, that man's face stood out against 
the background like a searchlight. Not be- 
cause it was white, and clean, for it wasn't. 
But we knew it was there, and we couldn't 
keep our eyes away. We tried to cover it 

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Up, but each time we tried the wind would 
blow away the covering, and there the face 
stayed, shining out in the darkness until it 
began to sap our nerve. We argued 
whether we should smear it with mud and 
finally we agreed to, but at the last moment 
we hadn't the courage. 

In desperation, we decided to bury him. 
So while Tommy ran our own little cam- 
paign I dug just behind the trench until I 
was tired. Then Tommy dug, and I pa- 
troled. While we were still busy with the 
entrenching tools our officer came along 
"visiting." It was in no sense a social call. 
He just wanted to be sure we were on the 
job. When we told him what we were 
doing, he pitched in and helped us, borrow- 
ing the entrenching tool of the one patrol- 
ing. 

In a little while we got the hole about 
three feet deep. This was the best we could 
do, and we were just hoisting the dead man 
over the rear wall of the trench when the 

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Bodies spotted us. Then we had to lay off 
for about half an hour. Our officer sat 
there in the trench and chatted with us 
while the machine guns played ^Taps" over 
our heads for the man we were waiting to 
bury. 

Finally we crept out again and rolled him 
into his hole, pushing the dirt in on him. 
We left him there with nothing to mark 
his resting place. We had nothing to mark 
it with. 

Tommy and I were fagged out and when 
our officer left us with a cheery ^'Good 
night," we built up a little seat of sandbags 
just in the middle of the two posts and sat 
down to rest and chat, every now and then 
walking to either side and firing a shot just 
to let Fritz know we were there. We had 
been sitting quietly for a little while, talk- 
ing in whispers. Flares from the enemy 
were sent up regularly and that told us there 
was no mischief brewing. 

All of a sudden, Fritz turned loose with 

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OVER THERETAND BACK 



his field batteries. The shells went whiz- 
zing over our heads, bursting just a little in 
our rear. We grabbed each other. The 
next second there were half a dozen or more 
splashes in the mud at number nine post. 

^We're raided," flashed through both our 
minds. We jumped to the corner, bayonets 
just at the edge, and waited either for a 
bomb, or for a Boche to show himself. I 
could hear Tommy's heart beat and I know 
he heard mine, but that was all — not 
another sound! We crept around the cor- 
ner. Nothing in sight. We crept to our 
old seat. Still nothing to be seen. Cau- 
tiously we went to number nine. The only 
thing in the trench was the parapet. Not 
liking its elevation and the weight of lead 
it carried, it slid down and caused the splash 
we heard. 

The sudden firing we discovered later 
was due to too much noise made by our 
horse transport. The Boches had detected 
it and treated it as they do all unusual 
noises. 

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Another hour and quiet reigned again, so 
Tommy and I smoked and talked until 
dawn and relief. 

During the day orders came for winter 
relief schedule to go into effect and we were 
relieved that night. 



107 



VI 



Going into the trenches is one thing. 
Staying there is something quite different, 
but coming out is by far the most exciting 
of all to the old foot slogger. He has got 
"in," done his tour, come through it all in 
the pink, and now it is up to him to get 
out and in the process keep his skin whole, 
if it is possible. 

It is ticklish work to make a relief and 
calls for all a soldier's ingenuity, but one 
hour's glorious swim through the mud and 
he is safe behind the lines with six days 
in comfortable billets ahead of him. That 
hour is a tense one, however, especially in 
winter. During the long season of cold 
and snow and rain it takes all the platoon's 
time to keep the fire trenches in condition 
without bothering about communication 
trenches. The result is that all movements 

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must be made on top of the ground with 
every possibility of discovery. 

Greatly elated over getting out before we 
had expected it, we threw on our equipment, 
looked frantically here and there for mis- 
placed gas helmets, left in a moment of 
carelessness on a firing platform or in some 
dugout, dived into a corner for some for- 
gotten bit of the kit or searched the muddy 
bottom of the trench for a tool dropped 
while we were cutting up the duck walk or 
notice boards to make a fire. 

The order came down the line to move 
off in single file in a sort of follow the leader 
game. It was impossible to locate all the 
stuff we had brought in with us, so with 
some of us minus parts of equipment that 
old John Bull had paid good money for, we 
started off "on the top," speeded on our way 
by the chaps who had relieved us. 

We moved with wings on our heels, now 
that the responsibility of holding that piece 
of line was off our shoulders. The pace in 

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OVER^THERE AND BACK 



front of us, if anything, was too slow, as 
panting and puffing we pulled one leg after 
the other through the muck and mire to- 
ward a little ridge over which we had to 
make our way. While crossing this ridge, 
which required about five minutes, we were 
in plain view of the enemy during daylight. 
At night we always chanced it and the five 
minutes. It would take twenty minutes fol- 
lowing the contours of the ground and keep- 
ing out of sight. The few minutes we were 
chancing the ridge, though, had the twenty 
minutes beat silly as far as we were con- 
cerned. 

We were struggling for the ridge and we 
had just reached the middle of the slope 
where we were in plain view of old Fritz 
when something cracked. 

It was one of those inexplicable things 
which sometimes happen. For some reason, 
Fritz's suspicions were aroused. Maybe 
our last raid had made him nervous. Up 
shot Very lights and flares by the dozen. 

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Some of them were parachute lights, the 
latter hanging in the air like arc lamps, and 
they seemed to glory in what they exposed 
to those lynx-eyed machine gunners. 

There was no camouflage for us. There 
we were in plain view, perfect targets. 
There was no dilly-dallying. We flopped 
in the mud where we stood. You might 
wonder why we didn't make a dash for it 
and cross the crest, but with twelve-inch 
mud and a fifty-pound pack it sounds easier 
than it is. The flash of rifle and machine 
gun fire, the flare of exploding bombs, with 
the occasional crash of a bursting shell made 
a vivid streak of light right along the line. 
A poet, an artist, or, beyond all, a war cor- 
respondent, might have regarded it as a 
majestic spectacle. To us, it was just plain, 
ordinary hell. You see, things were all 
coming our way. Nothing was going back. 

We burrowed just like hogs into that 
mud, packs hunched over our heads with 
an ostrich idea that so long as our heads 
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were covered we were perfectly safe. We 
were in the mud, though, and the longer 
we stayed the further in we got. It oozed 
through to the skin and half covered us 
until, lying there, we could put out our 
tongues and lap up the porridge like a cat. 

After awhile our artillery spoke up and 
sent over some high explosive shrapnel. 
This occurred, however, only after the com- 
mander who had relieved us telephoned in 
to battery headquarters that we had just 
gone out and must be stuck some place. 
H. E. shrapnel is anything but pleasant stuff 
and since not all the Boches are marble 
headed the racket died down as quickly 
as it had commenced, except for a spas- 
modic squirt from a machine gun occa- 
sionally. 

We were able to disregard such a little 
thing as a nervous machine gunner and we 
began to work ourselves out of our holes. 
We found by that time we were in pretty 
deep — so deep it required a little coaxing to 

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reach the surface. We tried to push our- 
selves out, but it was useless exertion, because 
with no solids below for support, our arms 
sank right to the shoulders. Then some one 
had an inspiration and rolled out just like 
a horse rolls when he has been turned into 
the pasture. So down the line came the tip : 
"Roll out and lead on." 

Some of the boys couldn't roll out. They 
had left us for a better place than billets. 
Their rest would be eternal, but it took 
friendly kicks and curses to find this out. 
In five cases there was no answer. In three 
there were groans. These three chaps our 
stretcher bearers looked after. The others 
we stripped of their equipment and divided 
the load between us, all excepting ten of the 
biggest men who volunteered to get these 
five boys out on the road so a horse trans- 
port could take them back for a decent 
burial. It required almost superhuman 
effort, but we managed, and an hour later 
found us on the old familiar cobble-stoned 

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OVER THERE AND BACK 



road headed for billets at a pace that would 
astonish you. The trials, the troubles, the 
dangers of this last tour of duty were behind 
us and already they were nearly forgotten. 

In another hour we were in our huts. 
About fourteen by twenty-four feet in size, 
they had a small stove in the center and a 
line of straw down either side; straw clean 
for a minute, or until we flopped on it with 
our muddy clothes or walked over it with 
our muddier boots. Candles were stuck at 
infrequent intervals around the walls. Some 
of the boys began at once to clean their 
clothes, scraping diligently with their 
knives, and all the while chattering about 
the "feeds" they were going to have as soon 
as morning came. Some already had fallen 
asleep. 

A head appeared in the door and a voice 
shouted: "All out for mail!" 

Have you ever watched a close world's 
series game? Well, if you have, you think 
you know all about noise and excitement, 

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but when "All out for mail" sounded 
through that door the twenty or thirty men 
in the hut got more excited and made more 
noise in proportion to numbers than any 
crowd the Polo Grounds ever held. 

Letters and parcels from home are more 
precious out there a thousand fold than any- 
where else on earth. The mail man was 
almost mobbed, then the boys stood by wait- 
ing breathlessly as he called each name. 
When one of them heard his name he yelled 
with all the abandon of a maniac. 

It is almost a ceremony with some bat- 
talions, the arrival of the mail after a tour 
of the line. They have it brought to billets 
regardless of the hour in which they arrive 
from the trenches. It was one of our pas- 
sions — ^we must have our mail. 

When the last envelope, the last package 
had been handed out shouts of delight and 
peels of laughter rang from every hut. You 
read parts of your letter to the chap next 
to you, overcome by the sheer joy of receiv- 

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OVER THERE AND BACK 



ing it. He reads his to you. Parcels were 
opened and things were unwrapped and 
strewn over each man's allotted bit of straw. 
All the while he talked to the hut at large. 
Since every other man in the place was en- 
gaged in the same way there was very little 
that was really intelligible. This fellow 
was expressing his approval of some deli- 
cacy which took his fancy. His neighbor 
snorted his disapproval of some very nice 
token manufactured by an energetic con- 
cern long on imagination but short on real 
information of what a trench warrior needs. 
Everyone was as happy as a boy with a 
new toy — that is, everyone except a few. 
Some men there are bound to be with no 
home, no friends beyond their immediate 
pals out there with them. A man may have 
every inhuman instinct, he may be tough, 
and hard, with a four-ply calloused soul, 
but it hurts him when the mail comes in and 
there is none for him. It hurts terribly! 
But more terrible is the hurt to the man 

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who has family and friends and creeps back 
to the hut with empty hands. He knows 
there is no reason on earth why some one of 
those at home cannot write, and it stabs 
right to the heart. No sympathy helps. 
There he is, undergoing horrors such as 
never were known before — undergoing 
them for the sake of the people at home. 
He doesn't need appreciation, he doesn't 
want it. But he does want and he does need 
a bit of cheery gossip from the home folk; 
how Gertie is getting along in the shop, 
what "movies" Hannah has seen lately, how 
dad is doing at the bench, a word about the 
last pantomime. 

Remember this when one of your boys is 
coming back to billets. 

The turmoil from the mail died away. 
In its place came long and prodigious 
snores. Morning found the orderly cor- 
poral dashing madly from hut to hut try- 
ing to arouse his company. He did this by 
the simplest possible method. Every hut 

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was told that all the others were pinching 
all the breakfast. It never failed to be 
effective. 

Breakfast over, parade for inspection was 
set for eleven o'clock. For that parade 
every spot of mud must be off boot and 
uniform, rifle and bayonet must be cleaned 
and oiled, you must be shaved and washed 
and every bit of equipment must be in per- 
fect order. 

At eleven, we fell in, clean, spick and 
span as though we had never seen a trench 
and our C. O. inspected us. One man had 
lost his gas helmet and explained that his 
dugout fell in and buried it. The officer 
couldn't remember the incident of the 
caved-in dugout, however, so the man's 
name went down on the book to buy 
another. A second chap explained that his 
entrenching tool had been carried away by 
a rat when he had laid it down after chop- 
ping some kindling. His name went down 
to buy another entrenching tool. Still 

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another hadn't scraped all the mud from his 
uniform because he had been on kitchen 
police, so he stayed on police for another 
three days. So things went until finally 
we were dismissed to fall in at half-past 
two for a bath. 

Half past two found us with towels 
around our necks and marching off to the 
divisional baths, located in an old ram- 
shackle building. We halted outside. As 
usual a platoon already was inside bathing, 
and we had to wait until they were finished. 
Outside the building were heaps of dirty 
clothes ready to go into the near-by wash. 
As the platoon ahead of us came out, look- 
ing almost sickly pale they were so clean, 
we marched into the disrobing room and 
stripped. Our uniforms we handed to an 
attendant who shoved them into a fumi- 
gator where they stayed until we came out. 
Our soiled laundry we carried in our hands 
to the door of the bathroom proper, where 
another attendant took it from us. 

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The bathroom was about forty feet 
square, with barrels cut in half placed all 
around the walls and plenty of cold wind 
coming in through the cracks. Each man 
made a dive for a tub in which were two 
pails of water, one hot and one cold. Here 
we scrubbed for five minutes or so, then 
getting out of the tub we went to a counter 
and drew clean underclothing and a towel. 
It was time then to return to the dressing 
room where we got our uniforms back 
smelling worse than ever. We dressed, and 
bath time was over for another fortnight. 

"Eats" was the next big thing of the day 
— not government "eats," but nice, fluffy, 
light omelettes, cooked as only Madame 
knows how, with toast and coffee. We were 
now luxuriously bathed and fed. The only 
thing lacking was amusement and we got 
it through the Y. M. C. A., motion pictures 
and our own special entertainments. 

Every division has its own troupe of 

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entertainers at the front. These men are 
selected for their talent. They give per- 
formances every night to the different com- 
panies. They name themselves, taking such 
titles as "The Whizzbangs," "The 
Crumps," and so on. 

On top of this the British and French 
governments allow the men and women of 
the stage in London and Paris to take trips 
to the front at different times and before 
returning they manage to cover "back of 
the lines" all along the front. The enter- 
tainments are always delightful and they 
are very much appreciated by the men. 

Battalions also have their own concerts, 
which are always amusing, but their humor 
is strictly local. One not living with the 
men would fail to catch the points in dia- 
logues and songs which send members of 
the battalion into peals of laughter. 

Thus time passes rapidly. "Six days 
out" are crowded full of concerts, football 

121 



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and clean fun for the men, aided by the 
estaminets which sell their harmless beer. 
So when troops are ordered into the line 
again they have been refreshed with good 
fun in plenty, they have played hard and 
again are ready for hard work. 



122 



VII 

The Bullring and its neighborhood had 
been a hard strain on the nerves of all of 
us. Taken out for our rest in billets, dur- 
ing which some working parties were sand- 
wiched in, we were not very keen to get 
back so soon for another tour of the 
trenches. We were grousing a bit at our 
luck when a battalion orderly stuck his 
head in the door of our hut. 

"All right, you. Report at battalion 
headquarters." He was speaking to me. 

I tumbled out and ran to headquarters 
as fast as I could, wondering what I had 
done to call down the wrath of the mighty 
on me. I thought of everything which was 
against regulations and couldn't figure how 
I could have been caught. 

"Leave" flashed in my mind, then flashed 
right out again. No such luck! 

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Would you believe it though? That was 
what my summons was for. I walked into 
the orderly room, very meek and mild, 
ready to receive anything coming to me. 
The sergeant just glanced at me. He was 
busy, for the battalion was going into the 
trenches that evening. 

"This is for you," he said, "be back on 
time." 

And he handed me a return trip ticket 
to London, or as is known in the British 
army, a warrant. All soldiers from France, 
on leave, travel free any place in the British 
Isles. 

I looked at my warrant, the sergeant, and 
everybody else in the place, then in a trem- 
bling voice said: "Thank you," and stag- 
gered out into the fresh air. 

Leave! Ten days of it! I couldn't be- 
lieve it. Then the fresh air cleared my 
brain. I let out a whoop that almost scared 
the headquarters sentries to death and 
started down the road as hard as I could 

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run toward our hut. I went through the 
door with a crash. 

'^Hurrah, fellows, leave! I've got leave! 
To hell with all of you!" 

So I raved till the crowd downed me. 
We wrestled in the straw until we were out 
of breath, then I took messages from the 
fellows for those in England, took orders 
for things to be sent out, took on a dozen 
jobs which I never did. Too busy. 

As the rest of the fellows packed up to 
go into the line, I packed up ready to go 
on leave, and I lost precious little time 
about it. A man going on leave takes every- 
thing he owns with him except his ammu- 
nition. It is necessary to leave this behind 
because the fellows over there are very sore 
on the pacifists. 

One Scotty went home on leave and was 
in a "pub" listening to a pacifist argument. 
They were going to do this and that and 
the other thing and were generally arrang- 
ing the world so that we could live without 

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argument. The Scotty got fed up with lis- 
tening. He drew out a Mills bomb he 
had in his pocket which he had brought 
home as a souvenir, and tossed it under the 
pacifists' table. 'Take that," he shouted. 
They did, and in consequence no one is al- 
lowed to carry home anything in the way 
of explosives. Otherwise some of the fel- 
lows would carry back 9.2 shells. 

I didn't bother with souvenirs. I was my 
own souvenir and it didn't take me long to 
reach railhead. It was seven miles from 
our billets, but I made it in record time. I 
never stopped once. I wanted to get that 
train and get it I did. If the battalion had 
ever been marched at that speed I would 
have howled all day. So would everybody 
else, but it was a case of going on leave 
now so it didn't matter. That train would 
take a fearful beating. It was slow; noth- 
ing could describe the slowness of all these 
trains. Every three miles they stop as 
though to get their breath and when they 

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OVER THERE AND BACK 



Stop, half a dozen Frenchmen pile in until 
one compartment will be holding about 
twenty men instead of ten. 

Now everybody loves a Frenchman. I 
do. I think they are a marvelous race; 
wonderful fighters; but have you ever been 
the lone Anglo-Saxon in a compartment 
with nineteen French ^^Tommies" with all 
windows closed and all nineteen of them 
smoking the vilest tobacco and chattering? 
— Heavens, how they can talk! A China- 
man is dumb beside them. 

On top of all this, have it happen on a 
train with no schedule and an engineer with 
a great ambition for overtime and if by the 
time you reach your journey's end you don't 
almost hate the word ^'French," then you 
are superhuman. 

Funny, though, but I didn't mind it 
much. All I could see was a quick run on 
the train and London. So, when we arrived 

at I pulled myself out of the human 

mess, shook myself, counted my arms and 

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legs and finding all of them with me, I 
made for the boat. 

The boat was as badly crowded as the 
train, but everybody spoke English and 
smoked good tobacco; at least it smelled 
good. We chattered like fury, too, but you 
could understand it and everybody was 
happy, gloriously happy, as we pulled out 
for Blighty. We sat with our lifebelts on, 
all over the decks and in the different 
salons, which, being overcrowded over- 
flowed upon the staircases so that once a 
man sat down, he could not move until he 
reached England. The boat that took us 
across was very fast and it was convoyed by 
destroyers, airships and goodness knows 
what not, for if a German will sink a Red 
Cross ship when all its markings are per- 
fectly plain, who knows what he would do 
to a British leave boat? 

They didn't catch us, though, so we piled 

off the boat at and rushed for the 

train. 

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We were an excited, happy mob. Cries 
of "here ye are, Jerry," and "comin' ole 
top," flew up and down the platform. Fel- 
lows jumped out of one compartment to run 
to another, others ran up and down the plat- 
form just out of sheer joy of being alive. 
They were actually on English soil again, 
and had to do something to keep their feel- 
ings from running over. Everybody tried 
to send telegrams at once and there was 
much confusion. With quite a bit of dif- 
ficulty we were all put aboard and we 
slipped away toward London. 

The crowds on the street waved handker- 
chiefs and cheered. Back came the cry 
from some one of our crowd: "Are we 
downhearted?" And every head, sticking 
out of the windows, roared, "No-o-o." 

The town passed, we settled down to en- 
joy the ride and anticipate the sight of loved 
ones. 

I was a colonial, though. We colonials 
would have to go another six thousand five 

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hundred miles to meet loved ones, and the 
English know it and try to make it up to 
us in their open-hearted way. They can't 
say Presto! and produce our families, but 
they do the next best thing; they give us 
their homes for clubs, with beds, sheets, 
bathrobes, lounging and billiard rooms, 
along with their chefs to cook the food we 
like, and they even wait on us. Their clubs, 
organized years ago, which some men spend 
all their lives trying to pry their way into, 
are thrown open to us. We own them, as 
far as these people are concerned. They 
even open their private homes to us ^'for- 
eigners," do these splendid people, whom 
the world mock as haughty, snobbish Eng- 
lish. What they have is ours, even to their 
own privacy. The badge of entry, your in- 
troduction to them, both the highest and 
the lowest, is an American, Canadian, Aus- 
tralian or New Zealand uniform. That is 
all; the fact that you are away, far away, 
from home. 

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I knew this and while I knew I would 
miss my family, I didn't worry. I would 
have a good time and be made welcome any- 
where. 

Fields flash by as we travel at sixty 
miles an hour. Soon, almost before we 
know it, we are clanking over numerous 
switches and are running into Victoria sta- 
tion. Even before the train stops the fel- 
lows are piling out and rushing for the gate, 
while the guards frantically shout ^Wait 
'til she stops!" No heed is given, though. 
There, just ahead, are loved ones and no one 
can wait. 

Swinging open a gate is a very neat young 
woman of the railway. She is a ticket col- 
lector and, more still, a woman war worker. 
I watch her rather than the crowd of those 
who have met again after a long separation. 
There is no cheering, no heroics; an ex- 
clamation, 'John," ''Mary," a fervent em- 
brace, a kiss, a second's look into each 
other's eyes, then a dash for a 'bus or a 

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taxi, and home. Ten days, after all, is not 
much, and a lot must be done in that time. 

For those who must cross London to some 
other station for a connection, it appears a 
formidable task. London with its twistings 
and turnings, some streets running on end- 
lessly, and to me it seems, aimlessly, others 
running short distances into blind alleys, 
landing one up against a wall, is mystifying 
and perplexing, but the people of London 
don't let the "Tommies" who pass through 
their great city get lost. Automobiles are 
there to help those who must get a quick 
connection or lose a day of their precious 
leave. These men are rapidly sorted out, 
piled into the cars, and rushed to their 
trains. 

For those in no hurry, aged men, even 
young women, appear as guides and lead 
the way to a nearby club. There the men 
eat and rest until train time. Or, if time 
permits, the guide will take them to a play 
or show them some interesting sights. 

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The persons who do this are men too old 
for service at home or abroad and are 
known, if I remember right, as the Volun- 
teer Home Defense Corps. They wear a 
little band on their arm with the royal coat 
of arms and the letters ^^G. R." The person 
who evolved the design meant it for 
^'George Reigns," but the "Tommies" went 
them one better and call these men "God's 
rejected." Not out of disrespect, but just 
because they are "Tommies." They like 
the guards; they wouldn't know what to do 
without them, and the grand old fellows 
come out in any kind of weather to shep- 
herd and nurse a soldier through wicked 
old London. 

To those of us who are going to stay in 
London, it is simple. We pile into a taxi, 
say "Canadian Club, Berkeley Square," 
and away we go. 

Everything looks great! There is life, 
movement which is free and without hin- 
drance. One doesn't have to continually 

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hide in a trench. The relaxation and free- 
dom are contagious. We feel so good we 
sing. People look around and smile. They 
know we are ^'Tommies" back from the 
front as everybody who comes from there 
is always happy. Singing, we arrive at the 
club, pile out, give the driver a tip that 
makes his eyes pop wide open, go into the 
club, register, and then a bath. As I regis- 
ter, I think of ^^eats." What a glorious feed 
that is going to be! 

Our beds cost us sixteen cents a night — 
a bed in the West End of London. Break- 
fast and luncheon cost us the same. Dinner 
at night is twenty-five cents. It's a great 
club, but a bath is all we want now. 

A tub and a clean change of clothing, for 
the club also gives you that in exchange for 
your dirty things, and we are ready to go to 
dinner, so three of us stroll out into the 
gathering dusk. We go down along Pica- 
dilly to a favorite spot we have known be- 
fore. Buses pass us and on every one is a 

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woman conductor. A man conductor is as 
strange a sight now as was once a woman, 
but the girls handle the job right well. 

We go to our old haunt. The men wait- 
ers are gone. The girls are even there, and 
the service has improved. So much for us 
mere men. We eat — such a meal; soup, 
fish, meat — but why go on? The girls 
carry food and still more food until they are 
amazed, when but once we get over our 
awe of white table linen, silver and glass- 
ware. Finally, breathless and uncomfort- 
able, we lean back for a smoke, speechless 
but happy. 

Recovering our breath in time, we pay 
our bill and start out for the theater; one 
with a revue on. We don't want dramas. 
We have been living in a human drama 
with all the play-acting cut out, a drama 
with life and death as the entrance and exit; 
something they cannot put on the stage. 
What we want is musical comedy; a laugh 
a second, with lots of music and pretty cho- 

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ruses, and we get it. With luck, we find 
good seats for the best show in town. The 
house is packed, the fun is fast and furious. 
We roar with laughter. War is forgotten. 
Two nights before, we were in France, 
waiting to go into the trenches. To-night 
the other fellows are '4n," thinking and 
dreaming of the time when they will see 
what we are watching now. Next week, 
the week after, we will be back on our jobs. 
To-morrow morning the civilians will be 
on their's under the abnormal pressure of 
war, but at night, every one plays and puts 
war a little out of mind. It is not good to 
be too serious too long. 

Theater out, we go to the street and come 
face to face with war again. The streets are 
practically dark, but the crowds, none the 
less, are flowing back and forth full of good- 
natured chaff at the inconveniences. 

We go to a "lobster palace" for a little 
supper. Outside, the doors and windows 
are pitch black. The only indication of 

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business as usual is the liveried attendant 
who swings open the door, letting us into a 
blaze of light, the smell of good cigarettes 
and the sight of beautiful women. It is 
something our eyes are hungry for. It is 
what we dreamed about while we were 
standing up to our hips in mud, and now we 
are realizing it while we may. We take 
the full enjoyment while we can and "ish 
ka bibble." We eat everything that is good 
to the taste and bad for the stomach, but 
what care we? It is leave, grand and glo- 
rious ! 

When we finish eating, we make our exit 
in a lordly manner, hailing a taxi which 
drives us to our club, where we go to bed. 
What a wonderful feeling — beds, and no, 
^'stand to" in the morning! Up any time we 
like! War has its compensations, after all. 

The next day we are out early, and climb 
on a 'bus for a ride. We don't know where 
the thing is going and don't care. The girl 
comes up, collects our fares, punches a re- 

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ceipt, all very businesslike; smiles as any 
good-natured person would do, and goes 
down stairs. 

They are wonders, these women. They 
are every place. Our 'bus passed a stun- 
ning team of horses drawing a big van 
through Fleet street. Perched up in the air 
on a level with our eyes was a young girl, 
the reins in her hands. By her side was her 
assistant, both dressed in serviceable uni- 
forms, with caps perched cockily on the 
sides of their heads and strong boots, lacing 
to well above the ankles. The teamsteress 
had one foot resting lightly on the brake 
and there they were, sailing along as mer- 
rily as could be. 

You can't help but admire the women of 
the British Isles, and it will keep our girls 
jumping to keep up with them. 

Some time afterward I saw a girl in 
Edinburgh driving one of the old-fashioned 
street cars that have the hand brakes, and 
Edinburgh is no level plain. 

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Others unload freight cars; they farm; 
they are carpenters, and they drive ambu- 
lances and taxis. They are in France. They 
are like the Y. M. C. A. and I am sure 
that like the Y. M. C. A., when ^Tommy" 
gets to that world-famed spot where the 
fires are always burning, she will be stand- 
ing outside helping the Y. M. C. A. make 
ice-cold lemonade for the poor fellows as 
they arrive. 

The munition factories employ them by 
the hundreds of thousands, and by a good 
many score have they given their lives for 
their country as the result of accidental ex- 
plosions in these places. They are glorious 
women! My hat, everybody's hat, is off to 
them. The only tragic thing about it is that 
we men are finding out how really useless 
we are. 

Our days are crowded with excitement 
and sight seeing; 'bus rides, taxi rides, din- 
ners, theaters, and peaceful sleep. A great 
and glorious existence! 

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Coming out of the theater one night the 
quiet of the city was gone. The air was full 
of rapid pops. A raid was on. The sky 
was full of searchlights, crossing and re- 
crossing one another, traveling with great 
sweeps like giant fingers seeking to point 
out to the anti-air craft guns where the 
raider was hiding. The air was full of 
little red flashes as the shells burst. The 
tops of the buildings where the guns were, 
seemed to spit little flames like sparks com- 
ing out of a chimney. The people in the 
street were curious and stood out in the 
open looking up until constables chased 
them in. Some caught taxis, telling the 
driver to go where the bombs were drop- 
ping. 

We hailed a taxi, and even as we started 
to tell the driver where to go, there was a 
distant boom. "Go to where those noises 
are," we told him as we climbed in and 
were off. As we drove along there were five 
or six more dull roars, although a little 

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louder than the first. As we heard them the 
driver speeded his machine and we tore 
along at a dizzy rate through the dark 
streets, the only light coming from the 
searchlights as they swung across the sky. 
Our speed was slackened by people, all 
streaming along in the same direction. 
They were full of morbid curiosity and as 
we worked our way along, the stream be- 
came thicker. 

It is a peculiar thing, human nature; it 
will send people miles to see some one else 
suffering. 

A special constable halted our cab. We 
could go no further. We paid cabby, and 
as all vehicles were needed to carry 
wounded he stayed to take on his other 
cargo — to hospital; moaning women, suf- 
fering from the shock of a loss; lacerated 
children, crying, wondering and not under- 
standing what had happened to them. 

That was the toll of the night's raid, that 
and demolished houses. Also a big hole, 

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blown in the middle of a street and all the 
windows in the neighborhood shattered by 
the concussion, to say nothing of the peo- 
ple's nerves. 

A few homes demolished beyond repair, 
a few families gone in one second from a 
fair amount of prosperity to absolute pov- 
erty, left in the middle of the night with 
everything they owned in the world on their 
backs — that is a raid. But not for long are 
they wanting for clothing. More fortunate 
neighbors take them in. But what human 
hand can return a baby or little child, put 
to bed at nine o'clock by a mother who sees 
the same baby at midnight disappear in a 
mass of brick dust and the smoke of an ex- 
ploding bomb? We see the grief of that 
mother as she is led away, saved by some 
mysterious freak of fortune. Then our 
hearts are filled with bitter rage and steeled 
for the things that must come on the battle- 
field. 

But then, when the time comes and the 

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Huns shout ''Kamerad" we, being Anglo- 
Saxon, send them behind our lines to live 
happy and content until war is finished, 
when we shall send them home to their 
families. 

We had to walk back to the club. Our 
taxi was doing better work than carrying us 
and as we walked, we talked of what we 
had seen. 

^Tou can say what you like, fellows," 
says one, ^'but any man who does the thing 
those airmen have just done is just as re- 
sponsible as the government which orders 
him to do it. The people know of the 
things the Kaiser and his crew do. They 
are intelligent; at least they used to adver- 
tise that they were. Well then, if they stand 
for the stuff their men pull off, they are no 
better than their government, and I for one, 
won't recognize them as any better." 

We all agreed, for there is no argument. 
Finding we were lost, we sat on a door step 
until daylight, so we could see where we 

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were. We sat there talking and smoking. 
I shan't tell you what we said; you'd say we 
were all crazy. That's because you don't 
know yet; it is only the same old story, any- 
way — Germany and her rottenness, of 
which she had always given us proof. The 
proof came this time not on the battlefield, 
where war is supposed to be fought, how- 
ever, but in a city; a city full of men, women 
and children. Still, what's the use talking? 
Fighting is the thing. 

Daylight found us looking for a 'bus or 
taxi, and putting the night behind us to be 
kept in our memory for future use in the 
field. 

Of that day I shall say little. It was our 
last day of leave. It sped fast, and so did 
we. And the next morning found us on our 
way back to Victoria station and the 
trenches. 

What a place is that station! What 
stories its old walls could tell of the fare- 
wells there daily, in the breaking dawn; of 

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the last longing looks as loved ones part, 
slowly and lingeringly. Part they must and 
do, however, bravely, silently. 

Early morning, 'buses and taxis start dis- 
charging their loads; mothers, wives, sis- 
ters, sweethearts, children, all clinging to 
their beloved. Bravely they walk across 
the pavement and under the portals, black- 
ened by long years of engine smoke so that 
now they look more sinister and forbidding 
than ever. 

Bravely the fellows walk toward the iron 
fencing that will separate them from their 
families until — who knows when? They 
reach the gates and stop for that last second, 
for civilians may go no farther. A hug, a 
kiss, and the man passes through the gates 
— gone. He walks backward for a second, 
then is lost in the khaki crowd. The family 
is left behind to wait, and it resolutely turns 
about and walks away. There is no cheer- 
ing; just a wave of the hand as if he were 
going to the seashore for awhile. Heroics 

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are not indulged in. As they say, ^It's not 
done in the best families/' and everybody, 
he or she, East Ender or West Ender, be- 
longs to the best families if he has boys 
''over there." 

That is what we saw, we colonials, as we 
came down to go back too. And I will con- 
fess it hurt a bit — with no one to say good- 
bye to us. 

But we climbed aboard and away we 
went, out of Blighty and over again. ''Now 
for what's to come and never heed." 



146 



VIII 

The trip back from Blighty is much like 
the trip over, except that the boys are all 
clean and that the chatter is about what has 
been, rather than what will be. Every one 
is full of the days of leisure; of rest and 
sleep and the best shows and the "newest 
bit o' skirt." Enough experience, enough 
pleasure have been accumulated in ten. days 
to spread through all the coming months 
until that next, indefinite, but already an- 
ticipated leave. 

We were probably two thousand who 
tumbled down the gangplank and were 
rounded up by the officers in command of 
the port to be put on the trains bound to- 
ward the front. Some were draft men, 
never out before, going to bring up to 
strength some of the old battalions. Many 
were back from hospital to once more tempt 
fate and pray for a "cushy one." There 

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were half a dozen "delinquents" ; men who 
had overstayed their leave and were being 
escorted back to their companies to make 
their excuses and stand for field punish- 
ment. Most of us, however, were there just 
in time to get under the leave limit. 

Ten days I had been gone. Our battalion 
had been in the line and now was out. By 
the time I reached detail camp I knew it 
would be nearly time for another tour in. 
I left railhead and caught the tail end of a 
transport wagon for a lift to billets. I knew 
immediately something was in the air. The 
driver had heard rumors of an attack. It 
might be ordered any hour. 

"Hell of a time for you to be gettin' 
back," he said. "Couldn't yer have missed 
the boat?" 

We talked of the prospect of a "push." 
We argued strategy and tactics and the pos- 
sibility of breaking through. I left him 
near the village and ran down the road to 
where I expected my platoon to be billeted. 
I saw Tommy seated on a broken gate and 

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almost threw my arms around him I was so 
glad to be back "home." 

"Fine time for you to be gettin' back," 
he said, but he almost shook my hand off. 
"Why couldn't one of them gendarmes up 
in London run ye in for a few days?" 

Then he told me. The transport man 
was right. An attack was ordered and this 
was Zero Day. The day of all days had 
come. 

For the officers Zero Day is a day of 
preparation from dawn to dark. They 
must check over and issue to the men all 
they will need in the coming attack. They 
must be sure that the ammunition is dis- 
tributed, that rifles and bayonets, bombs and 
entrenching tools are in order, that first aid 
packs are complete and water bottles and 
ration bags are filled. The detail to be 
watched reaches to every man in the bat- 
talion, for one partly equipped man, in the 
emergency, might mean the death of an en- 
tire platoon. 

For the men, too, it is a day of work. 

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Billets must be cleaned. Last attention must 
be given to equipment. There are letters 
to write, packets of keepsakes to be made 
up in case anything happens, and there is as 
much rest as possible to be obtained be- 
cause, once out of billets, rest hours are bver 
for an indefinite period. 

As each company is ready it goes down 
the road to lie and wait for the rest of the 
battalion. The colonel is there at the ap- 
pointed meeting place as we come along. 
We halt, and he walks toward us — one of 
the old "contemptibles." Our company 
commander calls us to attention, salutes, 
and the colonel returns it. And then, in- 
stead of a long harangue, he says simply, 
^^I will meet you at our objective. Please 
be there on time." That's all. But he 
meant a great deal more for he knew, and 
we knew, we wouldn't all get there. Our 
objective, perhaps, would be the third 
enemy line. But why prattle about it? 

To each company as it came up he went 

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in the same quiet, confident manner, giving 
his message to them. His few words did 
more to put confidence in the men than a 
long line of " 'ot air," as the company 
grouch always called the long speeches that 
are sometimes inflicted on us. 

"Tommy" Atkins knows he is a better 
man than the Boche and he doesn't need 
to be told it. Furthermore, he doesn't be- 
lieve in world-wide advertising of the fact. 
He knows it and so does Fritz, and they are 
the two most interested parties. 

The adjutant reports to the colonel "bat- 
talion present and correct," and we move 
off. In the distance, ahead of us, preparing 
the way for us as we march, we hear the 
steady pounding of the guns. Any one look- 
ing for signs of emotion would be disap- 
pointed. If a man feels anything — nervous- 
ness, hesitation — and everyone almost inva- 
riably does, there is no visible evidence. 

A man who goes to a new job or receives 
a promotion in his civilian office goes to 

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work with a certain amount of trepidation 
and anxiety. The first day everything is 
strange and the responsibilities are new. 
Will he make good? That is the question 
that is constantly in the back of his head and 
it may, for the time, spoil the joy of his being 
there. After a short while, he makes good, 
and everything runs smoothly. He may 
enter his office or shop in the morning all 
out of sorts with the monotony of the thing, 
but this feeling will be banished in a little 
while by the pleasure of seeing his work 
well done. At times he may take a few 
minutes to let his thoughts run riot. The 
unpleasant ones he glides over but the pleas- 
ant ones he holds fast to, lingering with 
them. 

The mind of that man is the mind of the 
soldiers as they march away. They have a 
job to do. The attack and Zero Day are 
just a part of the job. Sometimes they, like 
the civilian, get "fed up" and growl, but 
they go on just the same. The civilian 

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keeps on because to live he must eat and 
have certain comforts which he cannot ob- 
tain in any other way. "Tommy" keeps on 
because he wants, he and his, to have the 
right to live as they see fit in a safe and sane 
way. If war is the way it has to be ob- 
tained, then he will obtain it that way. So 
he welcomes rather than dreads an attack, 
since it brings him just that much nearer to 
his goal. 

Clad in fighting kit we swing along out 
of the village to the tune of "Everybody's 
Doing It" from the band. All the old 
French people come to wave us "good-bye." 
One old woman inquires of Tommy, 
"Poosh?" and he replies in excellent 
French, "Oui, Madame, AUemand Rhine 
toot sweet," which pleases her greatly. She 
hobbles off to tell the rest that the German 
swine will be shoved over the Rhine imme- 
diately, and the whole village cheers with 
feeble, quavering voices. We answer with 
a roar which leaves them all in such great 

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good humor that they go back and feed the 
chickens a little extra grain and the pigs 
an extra turnip. The chickens cackle 
louder, the pigs grunt with pleasure, the 
old people talk about Allemand and the 
Rhine, and we go on our way singing. So 
everybody is happy. 

Our billet was seven or eight miles back 
of the lines and away from the main high- 
ways of war. As we march along, it may 
as well have been England, or the States, or 
Canada. Soon, however, we pass an occa- 
sional idling transport wagon, two sleepy 
beasts and a sleepier driver, who wishes us 
luck. He knows where we are going. 
Fighting kit is worn for only one purpose. 

Now we pass a ^^tank camp," but most of 
the monsters are gone. Already they are 
in their positions waiting for us. They 
won't have much longer to wait. 

We halt for rest near an old artillery 
stable. There are only one or two old 
horses there now — old crocks — with three 

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or four men. The rest have gone forward 
to the line, waiting for us, too. When we 
have done our work they will bring their 
guns still further forward. 

As we move along, the rumble of the 
guns increases. Soon we enter another vil- 
lage, full of other ^Tommies" and the vari- 
ous men who work behind the lines. The 
band starts again, heads are up, every man 
throws out his chest and with a smile we 
swing through the village, every one in step. 
It is plain "swank," but right well we do 
it. Other infantry wish us well, we shout 
"good luck," and we pass out into the main 
road to battle. 

From now on there are wagons and more 
wagons, trucks and more trucks, all headed 
the one way. Ammunition limbers by the 
score go by, for the guns are fairly eating 
up their food. They are driven by cocky 
youngsters. Though they are barely able 
to sit in their saddles from lack of sleep, 
they go on, and on, for we can do nothing 

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without them. We know it and they know 
it. So they go on, if necessary, until horses 
and men drop with exhaustion. 

Staff cars go swirling by, skipping in and 
out between the slower and more cumber- 
some vehicles, the officers inside serious 
faced and frowning as though the whole 
thing rested on their shoulders. 

*'A11 this fuss over us," said Tommy. 
''Can you beat it?" 

''Better funeral than you'd get in civil 
life," answers the grouch, which merely 
goes to show how pessimistic and disagree- 
able some people can be. 

Out of all this confusion our colonel leads 
us into a quiet field to halt for a lunch and 
rest. The jam on the road continues, 
though. There could be no halt there. It 
is like a play with all those people as 
"supers," rushing on and off, making ready 
for the grand entrance on that battle stage 
of the leading characters — the infantry — 
us! And we sit in "the wings" eating our 

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bite and criticising the "supers," as I be- 
lieve all great actors do sometimes. 

As soon as we finish eating most of us 
sleep, for who knows when we will have 
another chance? Some do not sleep but lay 
and talk of what is to come and the chances 
of getting through to the objective. Bets 
are made on whether the enemy wire will 
be down or whether we will get held up by 
machine gun fire; that the tanks will or will 
not get stuck, but never a word as to whether 
any of us will come back. Everybody 
feels it; everybody fully appreciates the pos- 
sibilities, but nobody speaks of it. I think 
you will find that troops moving up to at- 
tack are worried more by the knowledge 
of the sorrow their death would cause at 
home than by the thought of death itself. 

Our officers are sitting round in a circle 
talking among themselves. So we place 
odds on them, too; coming back, to win; 
wounded, for place; and knocked out, for 
show. 

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Don't think ^Tommy" is a hardened, cal- 
loused sort of chap. He isn't. He is just 
an Anglo-Saxon and a sportsman. It is 
the same instinct that makes him put up 
always a good square fight^ so entirely dif- 
ferent from the habits of Fritz. 

"Fall in'' comes over the field. We put 
on our equipment, not to take it off again 
until we come out. We dive into the maze 
of traffic moving forward and move with 
it. We are getting well toward the front 
now and meet or pass other troops, also in 
fighting kit and bent on the same errand. 
We cheer them and they cheer us. 

How nice and green the grass looks! 
How blue the sky! Every little bit of the 
landscape seems to stand out in brilliant 
hues impressing us more than ever with the 
real beauty of the world. The village ahead 
that we are coming to, how peaceful it 
looks, but even as we look it belches forth 
flame and smoke and more 9.2 shells go 
hurtling to the enemy lines. 

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''Hope them things hit the blinkin' 
Kaiser," growls Tommy. 

*'Most sensible thing you ever said," an- 
swers the grouch, and every one shouts 
" 'Ear, 'ear, matey." 

On our left is a big, square compound 
enclosed with barbed wire to a height of 
about eight feet and topped by sentry boxes. 
It is the prisoners' cage. At the same time 
to-morrow, it will be full of Boches. As 
we pass it we enter the shell zone. We 
know, because the prisoner cages are always 
just on the edge of the enemy's extreme 
range. From now on, we are ''in it," and 
before we know it we are at the center of 
what seemed such a peaceful little village. 

Now it fairly teems with activity. 
Troops are everywhere; trench mortar bat- 
teries, machine gun companies, engineers, 
field dressing stations, pioneers and artil- 
lerymen; horses and trucks — big and little 
— automobiles and wagons — ^water wagons, 
feed wagons, every kind of wagon — piles of 

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ammunition in all shapes and sizes, tim- 
bers, barbed wire drums and wire stakes. 
Over it all the big howitzers fire continually 
with a crash that is almost stunning, and 
through it all we march on, out and beyond, 
leaving it all behind, for these things in the 
village cannot move until after dark. 

One thing we don't leave behind. In- 
stead, the further we go the thicker the 
guns, until their flash and bang are almost 
continuous. There is no wind, yet the air 
is full of strange, weird sounds — shells 
coming and going. 

We come to the last village we will pass 
through — at least it once was a village. 
Now you could not tell the mayor's house 
from the poorest laborer's, except, perhaps, 
from the size of the pile of bricks. 

Near convenient holes loiter a few sol- 
diers, ready to dive into shelter the minute 
an unfriendly shell comes racing along in 
search of them. From some of the cellars 
comes the sharp, vicious crack of the long, 

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OVER THERE AND BACK 



lean 4.7s. Now and then, as our fire seems 
to slacken a bit, we hear the whine of a 
Boche shell overhead, going well back. 
They are firing on chance, for none of their 
'planes are in the air and none of their sau- 
sage balloons. We have taken control of 
the air and not an enemy can live in it. 

Marching in half platoons we leave the 
village and come out into the open field. 
About half a mile in front of us we can see 
the entrance to our communication trench 
winding up the side of a gradually sloping 
hill, until it reaches the crest where our 
front line rests. In the morning, with the 
first streak of dawn, we will go down the 
other side of that hill to meet the enemy. 

All over the flat land and the hill are lit- 
tle humps, reminding me of the ant heaps 
at home. These little humps hide a worse 
sting than any ant, though. They are gun 
emplacements. We see little tongues of 
flame flash out with potential death for 
twenty men in every tongue. 

161 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



As a guide to the shortest way across we 
have the signs put up by the medical men. 
^Walking Wounded" they say, and a black 
hand with a forefinger outstretched points 
the way to where a dressing station will be 
found. The hand points back now for us, 
but it serves our purpose every bit as well. 

How many of us will be looking for those 
signs to-morrow? We wonder, and plod 
along. 

The air by this time smells strongly of 
powder, for the Germans are not taking 
their punishment quietly. We are fortunate, 
though, and get into the C. T. with no dam- 
age done. We enter the trench single file 
just as it gets dusk and we stumble along in 
silence. 

It has been a long day and we have not 
yet started on our real job. We are anxious 
to get to our assembly trenches so we can 
rest. So we grope our way through what 
seems leagues of trenches until finally we 
turn off to our right and halt. Our officer 

162 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



comes down the line, squeezing by with dif- 
ficulty, for it is a very narrow trench. 

"Sit down, fellows; rest as well as pos- 
sible. Smoke if you like, but be very care- 
ful of lights. We are in our assembly posi- 
tion. I'm going now to see if I can make 
arrangements to get us all something warm 
to drink." 

Those were his instructions as he left us. 
He never returned. A shell got him while 
he was looking for a dugout into which we 
could go by turns and cook something hot 
before we went over. Word came to us of 
this, but before we had time to give more 
than a second thought to his loss our ser- 
geant, on orders, began to move us into our 
final position in No Man's Land. There 
we lay until day should break so that we 
could move into enemy territory and fill up 
our prisoners' cage. 

You may wonder what a man thinks, 
out in the mud and within yards of the 
enemy with no protection but the sky. So 

163 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



far as I can tell, there are no thoughts. On 
that night, every man snatched what sleep 
he could. If there were those whose sleep 
was fitful, their thoughts, I wager, w^ere too 
confused for understanding. To these latter 
dawn came with the air full of a strange, 
rushing, whiny sort of roar beggaring de- 
scription, to end in a bursting crash and a 
wall of flame in front of their very eyes. 
The sleepers woke in the din, saw that wall 
of flame and mechanically reached for their 
bayonets to fix them on their rifles. 

The time had come. Our barrage was 
down. We had passed from Zero Day to 
Zero Hour. 



1U4 



IX 



Tommy and I had been asleep about sixty 
yards from the Boche line, not because we 
were especially brave or underrated the 
cornered German, but we were tired — oh, 
so tired! So we had slept. 

Wakened by the crash and din of Zero 
Hour we leaped to our feet, reached for our 
bayonets, and clicked them on our rifles. 

Tommy pulled me to him and shouted: 
^'Like a house afire, ain't it? God!" And 
as he drew away to find his place in the 
line, he shuddered. So did I. It was ap- 
palling, wonderful, magnificent, awesome! 
What is the use? No words will ever de- 
scribe that living wall of flame as it split 
the earth in front of us. It was Zero Hour! 

Even as we stood and watched, the smoke 
seemed to settle lower and lower over the 
earth so we could but dimly see the Ger- 
man S. O. S. signals as they went flying 

165 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



into the air in frantic haste. One of the 
fellows laughed, a crazy sort of laugh, and 
pointed to them. "Look at 'em. Look at 

'em. The know what's 

comin'." 

As we looked at their S. O. S.'s the whole 
wall seemed to step forward as though pos- 
sessed of seven league boots. It was our 
turn now. That was our signal to occupy 
the German front line. We were the first 
wave, so we occupied it. There was no 
fighting. There was no one to fight, but 
the enemy was far from being through. 

Their shells and machine guns were 
working overtime, but not on us. They 
were firing on our reserves and the tragedy 
was occurring behind us, but we knew noth- 
ing of it. You would be astonished at the 
little a man knows of what is happening 
on either side of him, in front or behind. 
Men may be knocked out six feet away to 
the right or left, but it is ten to one you 
never see it. 

166 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



The front line was no line at all. Our 
artillery had changed it from a ditch to a 
canal, so we crept to its far edge and waited 
— waited for our barrage to move on so we 
could get into their second line. We were 
choked with the fumes of the powder, and 
the flames from the exploding shells seemed 
to scorch us. The fellow next to me took 
oflf his helmet to wipe the perspiration 
from his forehead. German H. E. shrap- 
nel cracked overhead; the man's helmet 
dropped from a nerveless hand and he 
seemed to let his head fall forward as 
though exhausted. He was "out!" 

Tommy crawled to my side, and shouted 
in my ear. "Damn fool!" and he pointed 
to the fellow. 

I resolved to keep my helmet on my head. 

There were no tangible thoughts in my 
mind at the time. I could never get over 
that wall of exploding fire. It fascinated 
and repelled. It was like the hypnotizing 
power of a snake and as I watched, speech- 

167 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



less, it took that step forward again. That 
was the thing that made me marvel; not 
there, perhaps, but after; that wonderful, 
scientific accuracy which would take a wall 
of crashing shells and even as you looked, 
pick it bodily from blank yards in front of 
you and move it forward blank yards more 
without losing so much as one flash. 

As the barrage lifted we moved up with 
it. We were not a wildly cheering mass 
of bloodthirsty soldiers, but a silent, cool, 
calculating lot, evenly spaced apart, rifle at 
the port. We walked toward the enemy! 

It is easy to say walk, but it was hardly 
that. It is rather jerky progress over 
ground that has been churned again and 
again, burying, throwing out and burying 
again some of the terrible secrets it holds, 
until places that are not shell holes are great 
masses of spongy, soft, muggy earth which 
tries to suck you down and strangle you as 
you pass over. But up and down, up and 
down we go, always just behind our bar- 
rage. 

168 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



As we went forward into their second 
line, I missed Tommy. His cheery little 
face was gone. I couldn't stop to look for 
him; that was absolutely against orders. So 
on I went, thinking about him, and getting 
madder and madder every second. He had 
been knocked out, I supposed, as it was the 
only thing that would take him very far 
away from my side. 

The dirty swine had killed him! So I 
began to see red. I wanted to go look for 
him, but I couldn't! It was this thought 
that obsessed me as we jumped into their 
second line, and from there on I remember 
very little. Things were vague and unreal. 
Some incidents were impressed on my mind 
for the moment, but as I look back on it 
now, it all seems impersonal. 

The person who doesn't drink may not 
understand the simile, but when a man is on 
a drinking bout he will remember every- 
thing up to a certain point. From then on 
everything is a blur. The next morning 
the boys at the office will tell him of some 

169 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



weird thing he may have done the night 
before and he may have a hazy recollection 
that something of the kind did happen, but 
he never can be sure. 

So it is with the soldier in an attack. He 
goes along for a certain length of time with 
a clear mind on which is registered vivid 
impressions. Then the impressions grow 
dimmer and dimmer until there is no sur- 
face left on which they can place them- 
selves. 

In the second line we had fighting, fairly 
stiff for a moment. There were grunts and 
groans, then silence, except for the never 
ending crash of the cursed barrage. Pant- 
ing for breath, we stood in the trench wait- 
ing for the time to come when we could 
move on again. Selected parties were 
scurrying here and there looking for the 
entrances to the Boche dugouts. Some 
prisoners were standing near by waiting for 
an escort to take them down the line. 
Others came tumbling out of their dugouts 

170 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



about one pace ahead of a sharp pointed 
British bayonet. 

What a confusion there was! 

One man was sitting in the muck giving 
a first aid treatment to his leg and shouting 
at the same time: ''Bring some of them 

— Boches here to carry me 

down." 

Another fellow was ill, violently ill from 
the powder fumes. The odors were fear- 
ful. 

As I waited, half stupefied, the fellow 
next me lurched forward onto the ground, 
a piece of something in his neck. Whatever 
it was, it had sailed right under his helmet 
and gone through his neck. I wondered 
who he was. It struck me what a useless 
thing a helmet could be. I wanted to take 
mine off and throw it away. It was heavy, 
and hot. Then I thought of the fellow 
who had wiped the sweat from his head. 
No, I wouldn't throw it away. But I must 
do something. I couldn't stand inactive. 

171 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



Why the hell didn't the barrage move on 
and let us get out of the stinking place? 

I looked at the chap who had got it in the 
neck — lucky devil — lying there so quiet 
and peaceful — done, finished with it all. I 
wanted to turn him over to see who he was. 
No, I wouldn't do that. 

Just then someone shouted in my ear. I 
shouted in answer, but I have no idea what 
I said. Someone offered me a cigarette; 
I remember that. I lit it, wondering if my 
hand would shake. It didn't, and I remem- 
ber how pleased I was over it. Outwardly, 
then, I was calm. But on the inside every 
nerve in me cried for action. This stand- 
ing, waiting — it was torture. 

The prisoners moved off to the rear. 
Another hour, and for them the war would 
be over. While lighting another cigarette, 
something cracked me on the back. 

^'Got one at last," flashed through my 
mind. I wondered why I didn't fall over, 
when in front of me bounced Tommy. I 

172 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



fell on his neck and we had another cigar- 
ette. He yelled in my ear : 'The concussion 
of a blinkin' Boche shell blew me about ten 
feet. Couldn't find you again until day- 
light." 

Sure enough it was daylight. I had 
never noticed the change. My mind had 
been on other things than day and night. 
I had realized I could see easier than be- 
fore, but I hadn't put it down to daylight. 

The barrage slackened for a few seconds, 
then increased its intensity again. It was 
the signal to get ready for a forward move. 
So we gave our equipment a hitch and pre- 
pared for the last spasm by creeping a little 
closer to the barrage. It was movement we 
wanted to relieve the strain of standing 
still. Three lines were all we had to take 
and take them we did. 

The barrage performed its miracle of 
stepping forward and we were into their 
trench before the Boches had time to think. 

The third line was in fairly good condi- 

173 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



tion with dugouts a-plenty and full of 
Fritzies. It was a complicated process to 
chase them out, but it always pleases the 
British Tommies when they get a chance at 
the job. Dashing along the trench, we post 
a man at each entrance to the underground 
shelters, then down into one of the end ones 
some one shouts in the best German pos- 
sible, ^'Raus mit you!" 

Occasionally a rifle shot is the answer, 
but generally it is lurid, if unintelligible, 
language which we interpret as consigning 
us to the deepest and hottest corner of a cer- 
tain mythical spot. At the same time we 
trace indecent allusions to the memory of 
our ancestors. 

Our reply is emphatic and usually takes 
the form of a bomb, or if necessary, bombs, 
loosed down the stairways. Wild groans 
and squeals reach our ears, or the echo of 
clattering feet down a corridor. If the lat- 
ter, the boys get down the stairs in time to 
hurry the stampede by the use of one or 
two more bombs. This always causes Fritz 

174 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



to seek the first exit to open air. At the 
top, he meets another Tommy who is wait- 
ing for him. Fritz's hands shoot into the 
air and at the same instant he yells '^Kame- 
rad.'' 

The boys search him for bombs or other 
weapons, using his body as a blockade to 
the exit, much to the annoyance and dis- 
gust of the other little Boches who are fran- 
tically clamoring to get out. It's no telling 
what these mad British will do, so they 
shout, swear, groan and weep while the 
merry business goes on. 

Trenches cleared of prisoners, consolida- 
tion starts. Parapets are reversed, the 
Lewis and machine guns take up positions, 
trench mortars, light and heavy, arrive at 
the same time with engineers and signal 
men; carrying parties bring up ammunition, 
water, supplies, etc. Ambulance men fix up 
the wounded in the trench, and the same old 
barrage is still resting in front of us as a 
protection. 

The Germans shell us— not very accu- 

175 



O^TR THERE AXD BACK 



rately, perhaps — but we don't heed a thing 
like that now, as we are busy working and 
our minds are occupied. In the air as on 
the ground is the continuous rat-a-tat of 
machine guns. The enemy's aviators are 
trying to find us ; our fellows won't let them. 
So there is much and brilliant fighting high 
over the bloody field. 

The signalers string their wires, a dug- 
out is selected as headquarters, and around 
the comer comes our colonel, all smiles and 
happiness. 

"Good work, boys!" 

That is all, but his voice quivers. He has 
seen what we hav^ left behind us. Scat- 
tered here and there over the earth for half 
a mile, in all shapes and positions, lay the 
price we have paid for our three lines of 
trenches. 

The Germans are fairly quiet. They are 
"up in the air' and are bothering us but 
little. 

I miss Tommy, but even as I miss him 

176 



OVER THERE AXD BACK 



he shows up, dragging a sandbag full of 
junk after him. He has been souvenir 
hunting! He drops his bag and we shake 
hands silently. 

"'Many gone?" I ask. 

^'Dunno. Been searching the dugouts for 
these tin hats. Got a peach here, too. All 
sorts of ornaments on it. Show you when 
we get out.-' 

'"When do we go out?" 

^^Dunno." 

We eat, save the word, our macconachie 
ration, which is something no man has 
been able to analyze. It is the dietary 
X put into a tin can and sealed up. As 
we eat, troops come pouring into our trench 
over the rear wall. 

"We're your relief. Good work you did 
to-day." 

We didn't believe them when they men- 
tioned relief, but our corporal, who by now 
was in command of our platoon, came 
along, collected us and away we went, over 

177 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



the top, but backward towards billets, a 
bath, "eats," and rest. As we went in the 
gathering dusk, the ambulance men were 
coming forward with the stretchers to 
search for the wounded. 

As the Germans fight, it is not possible 
to go out in the daylight to look for your 
wounded. If you do, and they see you, 
machine guns will blaze and shells will 
come your way in distressing numbers. The 
presence of the Red Cross will not save you. 
Their theory is that if a wounded man must 
lay in the mud all day, infection will be 
pretty sure to attack the wound and the 
man will lose life, a limb or be held in 
hospital longer than would have been neces- 
sary in ordinary circumstances. 

That is why, as we go back, we meet the 
stretcher bearers on their rounds. We pass 
by silently. We know now who of our pla- 
toon has paid the price. We are sorry. 
They were good boys, good pals, good sol- 
diers. But with our sorrow is a tinge of 

178 




(c) .V. r. n. Co. 

Red Cross Stretchek-uearers at Work 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



gladness, for we know that some of those 
who have "gone west" are happy at last, 
and that we have done a good day's work 
toward helping to bring the end of the war 
so much the nearer. 



179 



X 



A RAT is a rat, and in France and Bel- 
gium it is a four-legged animal varying in 
size from a squirrel to a fox terrier, de- 
pending on the bloodiness of the part of 
the line in which he is born and raised. 

In British army slang there is also 
another rat. It weighs more than a hun- 
dred pounds, is four or five feet long and 
black in color, with a waist line of about 
eighteen inches. Some rat! you will say. 
It surely is some rat! Its killing power — 
just one rat — may be anywhere from fifty 
to five hundred men in the same number of 
seconds. 

The rat is a cylindrical container which 
holds gas — that foul, stinking, strangula- 
ting form of gas that the Prussians gave to 
an astonished world on April 22, '15, at 
Ypres. 

It is ghastly and hellish, this gas, a con- 

180 




(c) ^'. 7. n. Co. 



Their First Experience of Gas 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



trivance of men the devil would be ashamed 
to accept in his dominions, and yet, in de- 
fense, we have had to use it. 

We were at a few days after the 

"show," to be exact, just behind , 

having a rest (according to a divisional 
order). Our "rest" consisted in carrying 
rats from a spot along a peaceful highway 

known as road, to certain parts of 

the front line. It sounds very simple, I 
know, but it generally took from seven or 
eight o'clock one evening to about the same 
time next morning. 

Seven o'clock in the evening found us 
crowded in a motor iorrie bound for work, 
minus the lunch pails. We ran up in these 
lorries to well within shell range; then 
each officer, with his men, went on foot to 
the dump. 

The dump is the place closest to the fir- 
ing line that supplies may be brought to 
for the troops holding the line, and it may 
be anywhere from five hundred yards to 

181 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



two thousand yards behind the line, de- 
pending on the lay of the land. 

It was a case of first to the dump, first 
served, each party being handed a certain 
number of rats which they must deliver to 
a certain spot. As there were a great many 
parties, it used to be a hard race; the re- 
ward, billets earlier. 

The dump we raced for was about a mile 
from where we left the lorries, through 
the usual ghost-ridden ruins of a village, 
stark naked walls standing in grotesque 
shadows and shapes, with here and there a 
shaft of yellow light peering through and 
dancing and flickering on another wall as 
though pleased that even a soldier of any 
description would use the battered hulks. 

Into one of these cellars we could go 
and then into a communication trench and 
on to the dump, winding, twisting, slipping, 
falling, cursing as we went. This was the 
slow way; on top was the quick way, along 
the road which the dump was near. 

182 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



True, we might get shelled, but "what the 
Hell?" Wasn't it quicker and easier? It 
was against orders, too, but then we could 
get there so much faster. Maybe we had 
to flop when a machine gun went into ac- 
tion, and flop we did, not bothering about 
position, place or gracefulness. Just a 
plain, simple flop. 

Sometimes a stray bullet whirred over 
head, but we never ducked. You never 
hear the bullet that gets you, so why worry? 

So every night we raced for this dump. 
Our officer always left it to his men whether 
we took the top or the trench. Almost 
needless to say, we took the top road every 
night, sometimes getting there first, some- 
times not. We used four men to a rat — 
two for carrying and two for relief — loaded 
up quickly and went into the trench, for 
we had to go into it the rest of the way. 
We couldn't take too many chances with 
that stuff. 

So we would start on the long leg of our 

183 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



journey, about twelve hundred yards 
through the very flat country around this 
district. Thus on the long journey, sweat- 
ing, struggling with our rats, we would 
stagger along until out of breath, and then 
squat in the bottom of the trench with 
the eternal fag going, as well as a continu- 
ous stream of profane and lurid discussion 
of the day's doings or of some N. C. O. 
who had caused displeasure. Then up and 
on again, ever on toward the flares. 

Soon we would come to the support lines, 
with the usual drowsy sentry and the smell 
of cooking in the air, with every now and 
then a snore — for the support line takes 
things easy while they may, never knowing 
when their pals in the front line may need 
them. Again we halt and hear the day's 
news of the line; of the tall, lanky officer 
who came on a couple of weeks ago, forgot 
where he was, didn't stoop, and got it right 
through the ear. "Yes, had a Hell of a 
time getting him down to bury him. Was 

184 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



SO long, you know. Couldn't get him 
around the corners on a stretcher; had to 
put him in a blanket and drag him down. 
Don't know what the devil they want to 
grow so long for." 

And so it goes. You hear there wasn't 
much shell fire to-day. "They were feeling 
for some of our eighteen pounders back by 
the railroad with their heavy stuff. Didn't 
bother supports, though. Dropped some 
^Minnies' in the front line. Got four of our 
men working up there. Didn't need to 
bring them down. Nothing left but scraps. 
Put 'em in a sandbag and filled up a shell 
hole." 

So, for the news of the day in the line 
we tell them the rumors from the rear; how 
the division is going to Egypt or Salonica, 
then after a rest, a real one, we are going 
to take over garrison duty in India, reliev- 
ing the territorial battalions that haven't 
been out yet. 

Then we pick up our rats and continue 

185 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



toward the flares. It is midnight and al- 
most quiet. Now and then a rifle shot, a 
few spats from a machine gun and another 
flare. Then all is quiet and we go slowly and 
silently along to our next stop. We know it 
well. If you were blind you couldn't pass 
it. The odor is overpowering, and the 
ground is powdered white with chloride of 
lime. The powdering must be done for 
sanitary reasons, for it is a man's foot. Not 
much; you only see the boot. But there it 
is, and it is known to all who pass that way 
as 'The Door Knob" and the last halt to 
rest before reaching the front line. 

This part of the man, toe up, was dug 
into when this new communication trench 
was built. There it stayed, bidding those 
who entered "welcome" and those who 
came out, "good-bye" and "good luck." 

From now on, we go in silence. Each 
man knows his job and what to do. Any 
cursing is under his breath, for our friends 
across the wire must not know of our little 

186 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



surprise or the front line will get severely 
strafed in an effort to smash our rats, and 
this would not be good. So with a grunt 
and a groan, we pick them up and trudge 
silently on. Where we are placing them 
to-night is only eighty yards from Fritz, 
and as we slip them into their place we must 
be very careful that we do not knock them 
one against the other. 

A twist and a turn and we are in the front 
line, and we put our first pet into its place, 
ready and waiting to take its revenge for 
the dastardly crime of the Huns at Ypres. 
And with a loving pat we leave it to put 
the next in place. On one end of the fire 
platform stands the sentry, head and shoul- 
ders above the parapet. He may as well 
be dead for all the movement he makes. 
Yet those keen eyes of his are searching 
and watching. At his feet is his pal, 
stretched out on his back, asleep and snor- 
ing, the only noise in that line except the 
hiss of flares as they rise and fall. Neither 

187 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



notices us. There is none of that chatter- 
ing as in the supports. It is all business, 
life and death, and — ^when not on duty — 
rest, preparing for more business. 

In go our rats silently, methodically, and 
we turn to go out the ^^down" trench, for 
there is a system, highly efficient, and you 
go down another way to allow the great 
string of rats coming "up" to continue with- 
out a stop, for we must pay "them" back in 
their own coin. 

As we leave, the flares are still going up 
and down, but already we are too far away 
to hear the hiss. Our backs are to them, 
and we are traveling fast, as we have far 
to go for breakfast and are hungry. 

As we go, we pass the night's toll of suf- 
fering, the "walking wounded" — a man 
with his arm in a sling, another one ill, and 
a third riding the back of a stretcher bearer, 
his ankle broken by falling through a 
hole in the trench floor. All three are su- 
premely happy and inform us as they rest 

188 



OVER THERE AND BACE 



and we pass, that they are "Blighty 
bound." 

"Congratulations," "lucky devils" and 
"rub it in," we call to them as we pass. 
Then they are forgotten as we come into the 
open and start racing for our lorries with 
another party of ratters. 

As we climb on them and the motors start, 
dawn begins to break, flares cease, rifle and 
machine-gun fire is heard, with some ar- 
tillery, and we know that the boys in the 
front line are "standing to," guarding our 
rats, until such time as they may be turned 
loose on the Hun who introduced them to 
the world. 



189 



XI 



"You will report to the War Office, Lon- 
don, for instructions." 

Thus read an order handed to me by my 
colonel a few days later. I had reported to 
him in obedience to an order which had 
reached me down in our hut a few minutes 
before. He shook hands and congratulated 
me. 

"As an officer, you know, you'll have to 
shave every day," he said. 

So I left him and my battalion, a buck 
private for the last time. It hurt to leave 
them, too. I had lived with them, these 
boys, for more than a year. We had crossed 
a continent and an ocean together; we had 
suffered and celebrated together, but a sol- 
dier has no business to be full of sentiment, 
so we went down to the estaminet, touched 
glasses and grasped hands, and I hurried to 
railhead. 

190 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



By that time I was rather awed by the 
feeling of responsibility that had been com- 
ing over me. I gladly accepted the chance 
for promotion, but nevertheless it rather 
spoiled my trip down the line. I kept won- 
dering all the time whether I was fit for the 
job. 

Lots of sleep made the time to London go 
quickly and the War Office passed me just 
as quickly to a training school for officers. 
Over that training school I am going to 
draw a thick veil. It makes my head ache 
yet to think of it. Work? There is no 
word to describe it. What weight didn't 
drip from me with a thousand and one 
kinds of labor I lost through anxiety as to 
whether I would pass my exams. I did 
pass, though, and while I was recovering 
my breath I was sent out to my new regi- 
ment in France. 

The old play times with my Canadian 
pals were gone. Responsibilities left no 
time for the light and lightsome hours of 

191 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



song, and story, and games with which we 
passed the time in billets. I missed the boys 
but I fell in love with my new friends, my 
"Jocks"; the finest fellows in the world. 

While "Tommy Atkins" is the British 
soldier's nickname and he is known by it all 
over the world, inside the army he divides 
the units and renames them to suit himself. 
By these names they are known, so far as 
he is concerned. 

"Jock" is the name he has given to all 
Scotch troops, whether they be the kilted 
"Ladies from Hell" or the plain panta- 
looned lowland regiments. And "Jock" is 
about the hardest fighting, toughest muscled 
individual who ever crossed to France. Co- 
lonials and everybody else are included in 
this judgment. He assimilates the punish- 
ment of long hikes, mud and water, insuffer- 
able hours in the fire trenches, and the 
other little pleasantries of life in France 
with a grin and then seems to ask for more. 

Take him out of the trenches and see that 

192 




The Author in His Uniform as 2nd Lieutenant in a Scotch 

Regiment 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



he gets comfortable billets, three meals a 
day and his tot of rum at night and he will 
"grouse" for hours. France and everyone 
who comes within range of his voice is a 
part of his condemnation, but the next sec- 
ond he will sit down and write to his 
mother, his sweetheart, or his wife and wee 
laddies letters full of uncomplaining gos- 
sip, optimism and love, always promising 
to be home soon and always knowing he is 
lying in his promise. 

At night out of the trenches you will find 
the "Jocks" in the estaminet, a room reek- 
ing with stale tobacco smoke and the odor 
of perspiring bodies, their glasses of watery 
beer in front of them. Dimly you see 
through the haze, over in the corner behind 
the bar, madame making change and push- 
ing filled glasses toward a dozen struggling 
men, roaring with them Harry Lauder fa- 
vorites or some old folk song with sentiment 
in every line. But I must not call it roar- 
ing — these songs. The boys sing well, their 

193 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



voices are fresh and full of music and many 
a night have I had a lump brought to my 
throat as the strains of "Annie Laurie" or 
some one of the other north country melo- 
dies came floating to me across the night, 
borne by the volume of a hundred voices. 

The next night finds them up the line 
repairing their trenches, bailing water out 
of dugouts, shoveling mud, carrying ra- 
tions or lying keen-eyed behind their Lewis 
guns watching for signs of mischief from 
Fritz. The mud may have oozed to their 
skin, they may be cold almost to numbness, 
but they are not "grousing" now. They 
may be whispering of the folks at home, of 
the shooting in the hills or the fishing in the 
firths. It may be they are speculating con- 
cerning the fate of one of the platoon, 
wounded last time in, or gossiping of the 
battalion, or politics, but they calmly accept 
the life as it is. 

If they are moving up to attack they seem 
to fear nothing. If such a sensation as fear 

194 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



does enter their hearts not a soul would ever 
suspect it. They are not serious, however. 
Their jaws are not set in the firm, deter- 
mined line that delights the story writer, 
yet they are not boisterous. They move 
along carelessly and easily, cursing at some 
delay in front and wondering if they will 
get their rations at the new line to-morrow 
night. 

Pals have turned over home addresses to 
one another with no word of comment. It 
is all understood. They have said who may 
take any of their parcels that arrive if they 
are not there; letters are always returned to 
the senders with "wounded," "killed in ac- 
tion," or "missing" written across them. 
Parcels are bequeathed to a particular pal 
or to the platoon to be divided among all 
the men. 

It gives one a queer feeling to sit down 
and eat a bit of cake made by loving hands 
at home for "the boy" out at the front when 
you know that boy is "out there" some- 

195 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



where, a part, for all time, of the earth 
that is being churned into water or into 
dust; that he has given his all to the cause 
of his country. 

It is the unwritten law of the army, 
though — this custom — and 'jock's" spirit, 
while it responds to grief for the loss of a 
friend, cannot be kept down long. 

Two men came to my platoon while we 
were in the Loos sector. One was a boy 
of twenty, and this was his first time out. 
He was tall; six feet two, and thin as a 
rail. McCluskey was his name. His pal 
was just about medium height with a heart 
as big as his body. He loved McCluskey. 
MacKenzie was his name. 

McCluskey and MacKenzie were put in 
different sections by my sergeant, but they 
came to me at once and complained. They 
wanted to be put together. So I made the 
change, putting them in the first section, 
where they stayed. When we went to the 
trenches for our tour of duty or were out 

196 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



on carrying parties, MacKenzie always was 
leading man, with McCluskey right behind, 
and they would fight if any one attempted to 
usurp their places. 

In traveling through trenches you fre- 
quently come to what is known as an over- 
head traverse. These are barricades built 
across the top of the trench to prevent 
enemy observation or fire down long, 
straight lengths of trenches. On reaching 
one of these MacKenzie would say: "Mind 
ye'r topsy, McCluskey" (in other words, 
"Duck your nut"), and McCluskey would 
answer, "right ye are, Mac." 

Again, in a trench, you will always find 
places where the trench floor has fallen in. 
On coming to one of these holes I would 
hear MacKenzie call softly: "Jock and 
Jill, McCluskey," and McCluskey answer: 
"Right ye are, Mac." 

Soon I was very careful to make certain 
that these two men always got just behind 
me so I could listen to their conversation, 

197 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



until one night, while we were on a carry- 
ing party, the tragedy came. Passing 
through a piece of trench blown in by shell 
fire and marked by Fritz with fixed rifles, 
one of their bullets went through McClus- 
key's head. The boy dropped without a 
murmur. We stopped long enough to put 
him to one side until we should be coming 
"down" again. MacKenzie helped, but 
never a word did he say. 

Coming down, we fixed up a litter and 
carried him back to billets, the company 
turning out the next morning to give him 
a military funeral. I watched MacKenzie 
as the tears rolled down his face. 

After lunch I sent for him to get 
McCluskey's home address verified, and 
when he came in I told him how sorry I 
was over his loss of his pal. He told me he 
knew the "damn fool" would get his head 
blown off as it stuck so high into the air, 
and, anyway, he never would have made a 
"good enou' trench warrior." 

198 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



That was the way one "Jock," plainly 
bowed with grief, took the death of his best 
friend. 

My personal orderly, Dempsey, was a 
youngster of twenty-two, who had been in 
France since September, 1914, and only 
home on leave once in that time. Really, 
he didn't care much about going home. He 
had more fun "out here," he told me many 
times. He was the best natured boy I ever 
knew, and no matter what the circumstances 
nor how trying our position, he always 
could find something from which to extract 
a laugh. I valued him very highly for these 
characteristics and permitted him a little 
more latitude than is customary. 

In November, 1916, our battalion was on 
the Ancre and in the advance. Even so, we 
were having an unusual run of hard luck, 
and this especially applied to our company, 
which seemed to get into every hot hole in 
the vicinity. 

On November 13, on a dark, foggy 

199 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



morning, we opened up an attack, our 
company being one of the first to go over. 
With Dempsey at my side we started ofif, 
the company about forty strong. We made 
our objective and consolidated what we 
could by about two o'clock that afternoon, 
and sat down to wait for what would hap^ 
pen. But nothing very much happened, 
greatly to our surprise. Supplies were 
brought up, reserves came along to help us 
hold the line and Dempsey roamed the 
field looking for souvenirs. 

The night of the fifteenth we were re- 
lieved to go behind the lines and reorgan- 
ize. About three o'clock the next morning 
we arrived in billets, dead tired but very 
happy. I had been reported killed and my 
valise, with a change of clothing and my 
bed, had been sent down the line. Demp- 
sey was equal to the occasion, however, and 
produced a bed — from where shall always 
remain a mystery. Things went bad in the 
line and at six o'clock that evening, a con- 
siderably battered bunch of men, we 

200 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



marched away to brigade reserve behind 
the lines. The men were still pretty much 
exhausted from their previous three days 
and roundly cursed the troops in the front, 
but up they went. 

On the night of the seventeenth we were 
ordered to relieve a knocked about bat- 
talion in a new part of the line a little fur- 
ther south. Considering that I had one 
other officer and sixty-seven effectives by 
that time, in my company, it struck us as a 
rather ghastly joke. 

Eventually we reached the new line, if 
you can call it that, since there were no 
trenches. Only a couple of dugouts could 
be found. I divided the company into 
two parts, half in each dugout. The rest 
of the night I spent getting our bearings, 
with Dempsey's help, while the men 
stocked up the shelters with rations and 
water. At five o'clock in the morning all 
the men with me turned into our shelter 
— one of the kind known as a "tube.'' 

If you took half a subway car, stuck it 

201 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



in the ground and covered the top with two 
or three feet of earth, you would have a 
"tube" dugout. Inside are seats as in the 
subway, and through the center runs a 
rudely constructed table. 

Instantly the seats were crowded with 
"Jocks," full fighting kit on, dog tired, and 
trying to rest. In the center of the table I 
placed some rations. Just outside, two sen- 
tries were posted while inside we slept. 

Six o'clock came, and with it merry hell! 
The Canadians just south of us were 
launching an attack and the Germans had 
put a barrage on our lines. I went outside 
to see my sentries. It was just breaking day 
and a light snow was falling. The shelling 
was heavy and was being aided by machine- 
gun fire. I turned to go in and rout out 
the men, as I thought we were to be at- 
tacked. Just as I stepped in, a shell lit at 
the door, seriously wounding the. two sen- 
tries. We dragged them inside and the 
shelling increased to such violence there 

202 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



was no use putting other sentries out. I 
held a candle while the Red Cross men 
bandaged the wounded, both with bad 
thigh wounds. The candle was blown out 
time and time again by the concussion of the 
shells and the place reeked with burnt pow- 
der and blood. 

All day this fire continued. The entrance 
to our dugout was blown in twice so that we 
had to dig it out to get fresh air. One man 
crept through the opening for a moment. 
We never found him. The rear corner was 
blown off and some of the men were made 
violently ill by the fumes, but still we sat 
there, waiting for the crash that would hurl 
us into eternity. It never came, though, 
and a little after ten that night it grew quiet 
enough for us to risk leaving our shelter. 
We had two badly wounded men to get to 
the dressing station and water and rations to 
locate, but the relief to the nerves after that 
day of hell was so great that the men went 
out on their parties softly singing. Exhaus- 

203 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



tion could not stop them. The rest of the 
night and the next day were comparatively 
quiet and that evening we were relieved. 

After we had got out of the trenches and 
were walking along the road toward our 
billets I said to Dempsey: ^Well, what did 
you think of day before yesterday?" 

"Well, sir, it was like this," he replied. 
"When they opened up at six o'clock I 
thought it was just the usual ^stand to' 
racket. About eight I thought they were 
going to attack. By nine I thought they 
were attacking right beside us. By eleven 
I didn't know what to think. And by one — 
well, I was so disgusted I just pulled my 
tin hat over my face and said: ^To hell 
with it.' " 

That is the spirit of those fine lads from 
Scotland. "Never heed" is their cry. 
"Let's get on with it." 



204 



XII 

It was at a detail camp back of the 
Ancre on our first long rest in weeks, that 
I met Susan. We had had little but parades 
to bother us for a fortnight or so. 

Susan was on her way home from India 
to Plymouth, with her regiment, when the 
war broke out. She was about ten days 
out from India on that momentous fourth 
of August, she would tell you with her 
quivering mouth and big, soft eyes if you 
fed her enough sugar. So you may surmise, 
Susan was one of ^^the old contemptibles," 
and did her bit for the world during those 
strenuous first months of the war. 

She is still doing it, too, passing from 
month to month and year to year, going her 
way over icy, treacherous stone roads in the 
winter, sinking to her belly in the clinging 
mud of spring, enjoying intensely the all too 
few months of summer. But never in all 

205 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



the time has Susan lost her proud bearing. 
Always is the arch of her neck at its high- 
est, the swish of her tail quick and full of 
life. Her step, too, is elastic, as it should 
be, for is she not D company commander's 
horse? 

She has all the proud traditions of her 
regiment behind her; the oldest regiment in 
the British army with its history that dates 
back nearly to 1400, and still held up by 
the finest fighting men on earth, the Scotch- 
men, who fight with a pride of race and 
regiment that none can surpass. Even as 
the men were Scotch, so was Susan. 

She whispered to me, with her sensitive 
ears ever alert, of her wonder at the whole 
business; it was so strange, so bewildering. 
What was it all about? This see-sawing 
back and forth of men, horses and guns? 
Every one seemed to be in a hurry, rushing 
from here to there, then back again with no 
apparent reason. For five or six days her 
master would take her out every day at the 

206 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



head of his company and she would see the 
men; clean, cheery, singing men, swinging 
along headed by their pipers. How she 
loved those pipers ! And how the men loved 
them! They would lapse into silence as the 
pipes started, and trudge along with their 
thoughts away off in the beautiful Scotch 
highlands or in "auld Reekie," or maybe 
they would be buried in memories of pleas- 
ant duties at the Castle. 

Not so, old Susan, though. That was the 
time when she showed the boys what a 
credit she was to their never fading glory. 
She pranced proudly, tail and neck; yes, 
every muscle a-quiver, to the tune of those 
pipes. The men saw her and liked her for 
it. One of their own, they called her. Her 
captain on her back felt her pride, and took 
his seat a little more erectly with a tighter 
grip of her side, and let her prance. 

Such was Susan and her Scotchmen. 

Then they would all leave for five or six 
days, marching off silently and heavily 

207 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



loaded, looking like mushrooms under 
those funny tin things they wore on their 
heads instead of the jaunty Glengarries, and 
Susan would be left alone at the detail 
camp with her groom. Not really alone, 
though, for detail camp is a busy place. 
There were lots of horses, the other com- 
pany horses, but none of the "old reliables." 
They had all gone; some had been killed, 
many died in service, but all were gone. 

Peter, who used to play polo in India, 
and carried A company's captain, had a 
bomb dropped on him from a German 
aeroplane while they were marching away 
from Mons. 

Jill, poor old Jill, used to carry B com- 
pany's captain. While the company was 
engaged in a rear guard action one day dur- 
ing the retreat, she had come into close con- 
tact with the enemy and under heavy shell 
fire. She was left standing quiet, held by 
her groom, while the captain fought with 
his company. A shell lit close by, terrify- 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



ing the animal. With a snort of terror she 
broke from the groom, who already was 
sinking to the ground with a piece of shell 
casing through his chest, and galloped 
madly down the road toward the enemy. 
But not for far. 

Their machine-guns stopped old Jill sud- 
denly, so that when she dropped her body 
slid ten or twelve feet along the road. And 
even as she fell, she died, lying on her back, 
her four legs sticking into the air like four 
direction posts at a cross road. 

Then there was Jack, of C company, who 
carried seven company commanders in as 
many days, each one leaving as suddenly 
as he came. Some had dismounted to go 
forward and reconnoiter and never had re- 
turned. Others had lurched out of the sad- 
dle as though drunk, lying on the road with 
a dark blot slowly spreading out from be- 
neath them. Then some poor, foot sore, 
weary "Tommy" had mounted him and 
they had continued, always toward the rear. 

209 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



After Jiirs death Jack and Susan had 
become pals, and as she thought of him 
now she moved restlessly on her picket line, 
for she had loved Jack. They had often 
compared notes and wondered what it all 
meant; the continual bang, the continual 
wailing and screaming noises in the air. 
They had come up these roads ten days be- 
fore, then they had gone back the same way, 
the men staggering along, eyes almost shut 
from lack of sleep and with faces haggard 
and drawn and covered with dust and 
beard. When they rested at the roadside 
they slept even as they touched the ground 
and it was hard to waken them. They, Jack 
and Susan, were hungry. So was every- 
body, but when it was time to eat it also 
happened it was time to fight. There would 
be more bangs, more flashes, and they 
would start again, always toward the rear, 
only there would be a few less men and 
those remaining would stagger a little more 
in their walk. Some would drift along 

210 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



with their eyes shut, but always they cried: 
^^Stick it, Jock," or '^Never heed." Won- 
derful men! 

Passing at a gallop, going back to take 
up other positions, would go the artillery. 
Not the smart, swanky artillery of the old 
parade ground days, for nothing sparkled 
and glittered in the sunlight now. Every- 
thing was covered with grime and dust. 
The men sat their horses and limbers as 
dead men might and they dressed in all 
manner of costumes; everything but regula- 
tion. While firing they had discarded caps 
and tunics ; in limbering up to move away, 
done at the last possible moment, these 
very necessary parts of the uniform were 
invariably left behind, and as they passed 
through deserted villages the men would 
pick up what they could find, so that you 
might see some young driver, dragging his 
gun along at a dead gallop, sitting the saddle 
in a frock coat and top hat. Those were 
strange days, though. 

211 



OVER' THERE ANDjBACK 



How Jack and Susan got through such 
times one can only guess. What a pity 
horses cannot really speak and tell us of 
their worries and troubles and what they 
think of it all. 

Susan nearly could. Her wonderfully 
eloquent ears spoke as do a Frenchman's 
hands and the shrug of his shoulders. And 
her mouth! If horses had kissable mouths, 
Susan's certainly was one of them. What 
horse does not have eyes that tell you a story 
if you care to read? Susan's seemed to grow 
sad, even tragic, as I fed her more sugar 
and she told me more of the days gone by. 

Now they had turned, going forward for 
the second time. The men straightened 
their shoulders, stepping out with an alert, 
quick step, and began that wonderful race 
from the Aisne to the North Sea. Susan 
told me of one bitter night when they felt 
the tang of salt air in Belgium, borne by a 
sweeping wind, cold and cruel, from that 
sea, sweeping with it rain that was cruel, 
too, in its violence. 

212 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



It beat into their faces so that they were 
nearly blinded. It beat onto Jack's chest 
as he walked at the head of his company, 
until he staggered and his breath came 
hard, so that his captain got off to walk. 
Even then Jack staggered, tossing his head 
as though to shake off that which was grad- 
ually creeping over him. It was no use. 
He was done. He stopped from sheer in- 
ability to go on. His hindquarters swung 
from side to side, gaining momentum until 
he finally crashed to the ground, finished. 
Then his captain, out of the tenderness of 
his heart, took out his gun and with his eyes 
blinded by tears, sent one more soul out of 
its earthly shell, for King and Country. 
For horses have souls, even if they do not 
appear in the casualty lists and have a 
wooden cross with ^'R. I. P." on it. 

Susan whinnied as she passed and there 
was no answer from her old friend lying 
there by the road. And she kept on whin- 
nying all the night. Even as she whis- 
pered of it to me months later she whin- 

213 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



nied as though she would call Jack back. 
But in answer came the nicker and the 
whinny of all those horses on the picket 
line, for Susan was their queen. They 
looked to her for advice and consolation 
in the strange life into which they had come, 
for, as I said before, she was an ^'old con- 
temptible," and could tell them. She could 
even tell them how it felt to be wounded, 
but she wouldn't take the time now. It was 
noon, and feed time, and Susan was a good 
soldier. She took good care of herself that 
she might live and render full value to her 
country. So with her nose buried in a feed 
bag and the warm sun on her back, she 
would have no more of me. 

In the afternoon life in the detail camp is 
a busy one, for this is where all the supplies, 
food, rations, ammunition, etc., are brought 
from the railhead for the battalion and then 
forwarded nightly as far as possible toward 
the trenches by horse and wagon. To this 
point the men from the trenches come down 

214 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



and carry the stuff up to their position in 
the line. 

Stores of bombs are laid out and rations 
are put in bags and marked with the name 
of the company for which they are in- 
tended. The mail for the day is sorted and 
about half past three or so the limbers for 
each company are loaded and started off 
on their night's work. They will return 
about three in the morning, maybe, for they 
go as close to the trenches as possible, com- 
ing under machine-gun and shell fire, so 
that the infantry will not have too far to 
come. The foot sloggers have enough to 
do without unnecessarily tiring them- 
selves. 

Here, too, to this camp come the men 
from the line who are going on leave. They 
are happy. Once more they will see their 
loved ones and have ten days of good times. 
From their tent or hut, that night, as they 
lie there waiting to be paid and leave for 
railhead, you will hear them singing old 

215 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



folk songs of Scotland; the most wonderful 
songs of all, full of sentiment, and sung so 
they go right into your heart. They change 
at times to Harry Lauder stuff; rollicking 
happy old Harry, that also is good to hear. 

Then there are the last drafts of rein- 
forcements in camp also, just come in from 
railhead to-day. They will wait here until 
the battalion comes out of the line, then be 
apportioned among the different com- 
panies. Some of them are new men, first 
time out. They are curious, excited, eager 
to know the whys and wherefores of every- 
thing, but also they are of very good spirits, 
as one man who had left England on Christ- 
mas day testified in a letter: ^Tor a Christ- 
mas present this year the government have 
given me a trip abroad, but what a trip! 
Mud, mud, everywhere; mud and a roar- 
ing noise. Even the tea looks like mud. 
But it's great!" 

That's the attitude of the new arrival. 

The old timer who carries one, two, or 

216 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



even more wound stripes on his arm looks 
for old friends. Failing to find them, he 
looks for anything to pinch which is laying 
about loose and which will add to his ma- 
terial comfort. 

It is a busy place, all right, the detail 
camp, with its picket line of horses standing 
under an overhead shelter; all round, the 
mud; limp walls of two or three rows of 
little bell tents where live the drivers and 
grooms of the transports, along with the 
supply officer and his men. Draft and 
leave men are tucked away in here and at 
the end of the row are two or three big tents 
where the supplies are stored until it is time 
to send them up the line. 

It is the hour for the afternoon start now 
and the limbers are crowded in front of 
these tents taking on their sandbags of char- 
coal, food and mail for the fellows up in 
front. In the general excitement of getting 
the limbers away, I grab a little big of sugar 
and go back to the horse lines and Susan. 

217 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



She whinnies as I come up, for she is 
lonesome, and those who have spent much 
time at the front and have a memory, hate 
to be lonesome. 

I gave her part of the sugar and stroked 
her near flank where she had received a 
wound. She seemed to sense my sympathy 
and as best she could she whispered to me 
of one day at the beginning of the second 
Battle of Ypres when the battalion was 
stretched in billets for a rest. 

That day the Germans had turned loose 
their gas. Things were going badly in the 
line and the battalion was rushed up to re- 
inforce. The company commanders had 
gone forward on their horses at top speed 
to report at headquarters in Ypres for in- 
structions. Then they were to meet the 
battalion and go on. 

As they got near to the city the roads 
became almost impassable. Confusion 
seemed to reign supreme. People — civ- 
ilians — came down the road in unending 
us 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



masses. Old people, bent with age, looked 
neither to right nor left, but hobbled on as 
fast as they could, talking to themselves or 
shouting aloud some loved one's name. 
Little kiddies, barely able to walk, toddled 
along crying, wandering aimlessly, follow- 
ing the crowd. Going up toward the city 
were the troops, marching at the quick. 

Ahead lay the city itself, and Susan con- 
fessed she was terrified. The cool hand of 
her captain, however, calmed her and re- 
stored her confidence. It was fearful to see, 
though, that city enveloped in a pall of 
smoke, fed by its beautiful, historic build- 
ings all on fire now; a pall of smoke so dense 
the tops of the buildings could scarce be 
seen. Away to the front as a small rise was 
topped, appeared clouds of fog, which was 
not fog at all, but German gas. It was roll- 
ing toward the already nearly ruined city. 

Ypres was a roaring mass of flames; their 
crackling increased a hundred-fold by the 
crash of exploding shells, making livid 

219 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



flashes of red, which spurted through the 
smoke and cut into the dull red of the 
greater fire which was consuming the town. 

Toward this Susan galloped, terror in her 
heart, controlled by the sense of duty that is 
ingrained in the army horse as it is in the 
army man. 

On the outskirts of the city conditions 
were worse, if possible, than they had been 
along the approaches. All about lay over- 
turned wagons, or pieces of them, horses, 
men, motor lorries. In one little yard one 
wheel of a transport wagon stood up ready 
to go on when somebody brought the rest 
of the wagon. Even the inanimate things 
defied the Hun in his attempts at destruc- 
tion. 

In the city the crash of exploding shells 
was deafening. Walls were crumbling into 
roaring furnaces out of which belched great 
pillars of smoke. These pillars the Ger- 
man artillery used as ranging marks, but 
it was firing indiscriminately so that the air 

220 



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reeked with powder, brick dust and more 
horrible smells. 

Susan saw in the broken window of what 
once had been a house, a child's leg dan- 
gling through the pane. Even as she 
looked, a woman tore it from the window 
with a mad shriek and went screaming 
down the street swinging it round her head 
like a club. She went toward the Cloth 
Hall and her death, for the Cloth Hall was 
a thing of beauty, and so a mark for the 
Hun's artillery. 

Susan told me how she snorted with 
terror as she nearly stepped on the head and 
shoulders of a man. She shied and almost 
unseated her captain. 

I am not trying to horrify you. It is war 
— German war — that I am trying to tell 
you of. War on any body and any place 
that gets in Kultur's way. It horrified 
Susan and it horrifies me. So it must you, 
too, when you know of it. 

It was Susan's fate to see no more, for 

221 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



it was here she was wounded. I am sure 
she sighed with relief as she struggled to 
tell me, as plainly as she could, how there 
had come a blinding flash nearby. There 
was so much noise she didn't hear the ex- 
plosion. After the flash — less than a sec- 
ond after — she felt a blow on her near flank. 
It felt like a branding iron at first, but it 
sank into the flesh, burning. It was hot; 
oh, so hot! And it kept on burning as 
though it were a ball of fire. She bucked. 
She screamed. 

Have you ever heard a horse scream in 
pain and terror? 

Then she started running. 

There was no hand on her bridle. The 
captain had gone — gone without her know- 
ing how or when, and she never knew. But 
she ran, mad with pain, fortunately in the 
right direction. She may have knocked 
people over. She thinks she did, but she 
doesn't remember. She saw long lines of 
khaki moving rapidly toward the city, but 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



they paid no attention to her. She was only 
one of numberless horses without riders, 
and added just so much to the confusion. 

Finally exhaustion forced her to a walk 
and so the veterinarians found her. They 
stopped her, spoke kind words to her, 
soothed her, and all the time worked on her 
torn flank. It was only a flesh wound, for- 
tunately, and not serious, and as they talked 
Susan forgot her fear. But the pain was 
still intense and she was slowly led oflf to a 
field where there were other horses, injured, 
with masters lost, confined in a kind of 
loosely constructed corral. So she left her 
battalion for three months. 

When she returned to the regiment for 
duty everything had changed. The old 
faces were gone, many of them never to 
reappear, but she was treated with the most 
flattering respect by the other horses at de- 
tail camp and at once acknowledged to be 
their leader. 

Time passed. The men continued their 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



coming and going. For six, eight, ten, even 
fifteen days, they would be away and then 
they would come back weary and worn, 
eyes bloodshot, feet torn, uniforms in rags. 
Trench warfare was well under way. 
Sometimes her captain wouldn't come back 
and she would mourn the loss of one more 
friend and wonder who her next captain 
might be. 

Susan says the war has taught her one 
thing: a brave man never abuses a dumb 
animal. Every captain who rode her was 
gentle and kind. Some of them hurt her 
back by bobbing all over the saddle, but 
she was patient with them and helped them 
while they learned to ride. Sometimes it 
was hard and strained her temper, but she 
bore it and never complained. She is one 
of the heroes of the war. 

One of the heroes, I say, because there 
are hundreds of thousands like her; dumb 
animals doing their work faithfully and 
well. They cannot comprehend it all, the 

224 




(C) N. T. H. Co. 

"GooD-BY, Old Man." The Bombaediee and His Dying Fkiend 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



crashing, roaring, burning; the crazy rush- 
ing about from place to place; the mud; 
the uncertain feeding. But they go on, will- 
ingly and uncomplainingly, and dying. 

No greater hero passes away than these 
horses. Their praises remain unsung. They 
have no names on the casualty lists and no 
medals of honor for bravery under fire are 
struck for them. No one knows of them 
and — I was going to say no one cares. But 
there I am wrong. Their drivers and their 
grooms care, but what can they do? It is 
part and parcel of the Great War and Susan 
knows it. So she carries on from month to 
month until the time shall come for her 
passing out — just a gentle, dumb, four- 
legged animal doing her share for King and 
Country. 



225 



XIII 

Just behind the little village of Monchy, 
or the remains of it, is a cemetery — a Brit- 
ish cemetery. In it there is a grave, the 
same as another thousand or so in the same 
cemetery. Over it is a little wooden cross, 
the same as a thousand others, except for 
the name. That name is the name of my 
pal. It has "R. I. P." underneath. He has 
gone with all the others, in the mad excite- 
ment of battle; dropping at the head of his 
men, with victory in sight. 

He is gone. I'll never see him again on 
this old earth, but I remember him. The 
war has taught me the meaning of that old 
phrase, "gone but not forgot." 

I remember when he first came to Trin- 
ity where we were all studying for our com- 
missions. He was young, nineteen, full of 
life, with all its hopes and ambitions, and 
unused to military ways. He was always 

226 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



late for parades, always late for lectures, 
and late for appointments. Life was so 
new and full, he had too many things to do. 

I remember the last time I saw him. He 
was leaving the base in France to join his 
battalion. He was late for the train. It 
was made up of cattle cars. As it pulled 
out, he rushed down the hill and flung him- 
self onto the side of the next to the last car, 
late again. When the time came, though, 
for his last appointment he was there; a 
young boy just coming into manhood, but 
bravely keeping his appointment with 
death,^ with trust in God and the fear of no 
man in his heart. And so he died. 

His was just one more wooden cross 
added to the thousands already there; just 
one more broken family. He was just one 
more reason why we must go on, so that 
the young life will not have been wasted; 
so that the flower of our manhood which 
will remain abroad will not have been cut 
down in vain. 

227 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



There was a little fellow in my platoon. 
The boys called him ^'Charley Chaplin." 
He was small — undersized — and not very 
strong. I had often looked at him and won- 
dered how he stood it. He had a little 
mustache like ^'Charley's," but his eyes 
were lifeless and sunk well into his head. 
He was married, had two children, was 
over age, but he had come because the rest 
of the boys had come and he couldn't be 
called a ^'slacker." He was doing his thir- 
teenth month in France and was top name 
on the battalion leave roster. 

One day a telegram was handed to me 
saying that the mother of one of my men 
had died. The message was signed by the 
chief of police of his home town. I sent 
for the man, gave it to him, and he broke 
down. All he could say was : "I want to go 
home." His place on the leave roster was 
about the middle. I sent for ^'Charley 
Chaplin," explained the circumstances and 
asked him if he would change places with 
this other man. 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



That wizened, little, dried-up chap, more 
than a year away from his own wife 
and kiddies, without a second's hesitation, 
said, ^^Certainly, sir," knowing full well 
that he postponed his own leave six months. 

What a heart for a man to possess! 

I went to the colonel to obtain his consent 
and as I explained the circumstances, 
"Thank God the mud hasn't eaten into the 
men's souls," he said. "Certainly. Make 
what arrangements you like." 

I did. 

The next morning the other man went on 
ten days' leave and "Charley Chaplin" went 
to the trenches with his company and what 
I had feared happened. Our front line was 
strafed with "Minnies." Dodging one, 
poor "Charley" ran into another. His 
thigh was crushed by a piece of casing. It 
was too much for the little man from the 
start. We got him to the dressing station, 
but in the early hours of the morning, his 
little frame gave a shudder and released his 
big soul to return where it belonged. One 

229 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



more British "Tommy" remained in 
France! 

Another little thing I will always re- 
member. Three of us were going up to a 
front line trench one day to reconnoiter 
new positions. The enemy were shelling, 
not heavily but continuously and fairly ac- 
curately. We didn't like it and debated 
whether we should go on. We decided to 
stick it, so pushed forward. It was a bright, 
sunny afternoon and it would have been 
good to be alive had it not been for the 
racket; one of those days that make you 
want to roll and stretch out on the grass. 

"Hell of a day to die," one of the fellows 
said, and we told him to shut up. 

We had stopped for a minute to sketch in 
a piece of trench and were all three talking 
and smoking when another fellow came 
down the trench as hard as he could leg it. 
He saw us and slowed up. 

"TheyVe got him, fellows, they've got 
him!" was all he could say. 

He stood looking at us and shook like a 

230 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



leaf. It put the wind up us a bit. We 
thought maybe the Boches were in the 
trench. Then he asked for a medical officer 
and we knew somebody was wounded. We 
told him where to find what he wanted and 
went forward to see what we could do. 
Round a corner we came across an officer 
lying full length on his back, "out" for 
good. A piece of shell casing had caught 
him in the throat and chest. 

The thing that struck me was his left 
breast. It was covered by two rows of 
service ribbons, but, I thought, "of what use 
are they to him now?" He was gone; they 
had not saved him. There they lay on his 
breast, little bits of color. To us, they said: 
"Here is a man who has given all his life- 
time to his country; now he has given his 
life." He was gone, and we were the only 
three who saw. 

That sight was vividly on my mind for 
a long time, and was responsible for the 
worst fright I ever had. 

About a week after this had occurred our 

231 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



battalion moved into the line and our com- 
pany took up a front-line position. To get 
to it, we had to use that same trench. Every 
time I went through it, my skin had little 
goose pimples on it. 

Word was sent up about two o'clock one 
morning that I was to report to battalion 
headquarters. 

No one was supposed to travel alone in 
that part of the line. It was really bad. 
But not one of the men was idle at the time 
so I set out alone, knowing I had to pass 
through the trench that I so hated. Un- 
known to me, another battalion had been 
carrying up big trench mortar shells most 
of the night. They had carried them so far, 
then set them down right in the middle of 
the trench for us to carry the rest of the 
way. They were big, weighed about one 
hundred pounds, and were in cases. 

I started down to headquarters in the 
blackest of black nights. A flare went up 
every minute or so, then darkness again. A 

232 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



shell exploded, throwing its red glare 
through the blackness for a second, then it 
would be blacker than ever. I stumbled 
along till I came to this place where the 
ofEcer had been knocked out, and blind, un- 
reasoning fear took hold of me. I could 
see him lying there, leering at me, as though 
he meant to grab my leg as I passed. I 
could almost feel his hand around my ankle, 
then I lit out as fast as I could run, afraid, 
and badly afraid. The very darkness scared 
me. I saw things in every corner, terrible 
things that only come from a distorted 
imagination. I ran, and in the darkness 
went crash! over one of these cases holding 
a shell. I shot right across the top of it, 
picked myself up and ran harder than ever, 
and crashed over another one. That stopped 
me. I nearly broke my legs and pain took 
the place of fear, so that I sat on a case, 
rubbing my shins and cursing. My shins 
hurt terribly, and I was ashamed, and 
cursed again for being afraid. As I think 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



of it now, I can laugh. It was funny even 
the next day, but I never traveled alone any 
more in that trench at night. 

I often remember the time we were in a 
certain sector holding our line with out- 
posts. It was almost open warfare. The 
ground was a mass of stinking, polluted 
shell holes. Wherever we could find a dug- 
out, we put in a Lewis gun protected by 
bombers. The trenches were all blown in; 
in some places so badly we lost all trace of 
them. We were in the old German line 
and hardly knew where our supports on 
either side could be found. It was impos- 
sible to move during the daytime, so we 
slept and ate all day in our dugouts which 
the Germans had made for us, and at night 
we ventured forth to get our rations, water, 
and other necessities to keep us alive, slink- 
ing from place to place in the darkness like 
a gang of street toughs. When daylight 
broke, we sneaked back to our holes as 
though afraid of the light. 

234 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



Down in the holes fires were started in 
the braziers, which are simply large cans 
with holes punched in them. Until the fire 
blazed up everyone choked with the smoke. 
Rubbing our eyes, we stood around and 
swore until the smell of bacon overcame the 
effects of the smoke, tea water bubbled 
merrily, singing its little song, and then we 
were happy again. Everyone had breakfast 
and all was quiet except for the snores of 
exhausted men. 

At the top of the stairs lolled a sentry, 
watching the ground ahead of him for any 
movement. Once in awhile he would duck 
into the stairs as a shell came roaring his 
way to burst on the roof of the dugout, 
while thirty feet below a man turned lazily 
in his sleep, disturbed for a moment, and 
then continued snoring. 

At the foot of the staircase sat the officer 
on duty sleepily playing ^Tatience," his 
head dropping forward now and then to be 
recovered with a jerk. So the day passed, 

235 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



for the mud hindered any offensive. It was 
winter. 

Along about half-past three on this day 
everybody began to stir. My orderly took 
a can and slipped out of the dugout in the 
gathering dusk to get water for tea — always 
the eternal tea. For two nights it had 
tasted foul. It was almost impossible to 
drink it. I asked him where he got it. "In 
a shell hole," he said. So I asked him to 
take a look at the shell hole. He came back 
in about half an hour and in a very apolo- 
getic tone said he was sorry, but that he 
couldn't make tea until it got darker so that 
he could look for another shell hole. The 
one we had been using, it seemed, had a 
dead Gordon Highlander and two Boches 
in it and he supposed I wouldn't want to 
use that water any more. I didn't. 

I remember another man, in the dim days 
of long ago when the war began. He was 
mobilized with our company. He was a 
slight fellow and not very tall, and full of 

236 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



the very old devil; Jimmy, by name. He 
was the first man to come before our com- 
pany commander for punishment, he was 
the first man in the battalion to be tried by 
the colonel, he was the first drunk, and the 
first man to leave camp without a pass and 
not come back till he got good and ready. 
In fact, he taught us all how not to be sol- 
diers, and made a general nuisance of him- 
self until the poor old colonel tore his hair 
in despair. They locked him in the guard 
room and he got out. We all laughed and 
encouraged him to some new stunt and the 
officers became frantic. 

Then came our orders to go across from 
Canada, and he behaved himself on board 
the transport. In England before we had 
been ten days in camp, he disappeared. 
The military police brought him back from 
Ireland. They had a lively trip, but landed 
him in camp all right and a court martial 
placed him in detention barracks, where he 
stayed until a week before we crossed to 

237 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



France. When we did cross, the colonel left 
him behind because he had been in a mili- 
tary prison instead of training with the 
men. When we got off the boat in France, 
so did Jimmy. 

The company commander nearly had a 
spasm. So did the colonel. And the com- 
pany laughed. They gave him a rifle and 
equipment — he had brought none — and he 
marched to the line with us, happy at last. 

In the trenches he was a glutton for work. 
No mud was too thick, no job too hard or 
dangerous. Nothing bothered him. He 
always had a smile and a joke or a song. 
When we were out of the line he spent his 
time in the estaminet or sleeping. So he 
lived for four or five months happy and 
content. 

Then came the episode of the craters at 
St. Eloi. 

The battalion relieved troops who had 
consolidated some mine craters which had 
been blown a few hours before. The Ger- 

238 



OVJER THERE AND BACK 



man artillery turned loose with everything 
they had in range. It was absolute hell. 
Men were buried, blown up in the air and 
buried again. Rifles were rendered useless 
by the mud. The men lay there waiting 
for their time to come, for signals were 
down and it was impossible to establish 
communication with the rear. Man after 
man "went out" until our strength was so 
impaired it was impossible to resist should 
an attack be made. 

Some of the men went crazy and tried to 
walk out of that hell, and we saw them no 
more. Through it all lay Jimmy, saying 
nothing, although nobody could have 
heard him, the din was so terrific. The 
tongues and lips of the men were swollen 
and they crept about pleading with each 
other for water. 

Jimmy's officer beckoned to him. He 
crawled over. His officer handed him a 
message marked "Battalion Headquarters." 
It was a report on the situation, and Jimmy 

239 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



was off. No rifle, no equipment. He threw 
it away as superfluous and ran — ran for 
dear life — splashing, falling and tumbling 
through the rotten mud. It held him back 
and he cursed it; he struggled for breath, 
but pushed ahead. He was knocked over by 
the concussion of an exploding shell. Half 
crazy, he picked himself up and staggered 
on his way, "Battalion Headquarters" burn- 
ing into his brain. He had to get there, and 
get there he did, but he was a maniac at the 
last. 

To-day Jimmy is still in hospital, the 
quietest, mildest-mannered person you 
would care to meet, almost feminine in his 
mildness. He will ask you if you want to 
see "Battalion Headquarters." That is all 
he knows. There is hope, though, that some 
day he will return to his old natural self. 
At the present, he is trying to remember 
where he was when he left for "Battalion 
Headquarters" so he can go back and re- 
port to his officer. 

240 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



Then there was cheery little Tommy, my 
pal for a long time, but he went the way 
of the rest. We were in a quiet sector of 
the line in what is known as "peacetime 
trenches." Tommy was on sentry go. It 
was a nice, warm day, and we were talking 
of the good and hard times we had seen 
and of those who had gone, either "West" 
or to Blighty. Then, as usual, the old topic 
came up; what would we do after the war? 

"Well, you can say all you like about 
your rovin' dispositions and never settlin' 
down," said Tommy, "but here's one guy 
with his belly full of rovin\ The next war 
sees me at the station waving handkerchiefs 
and hurraying when the boys go away," and 
he got up to the firing platform to look 
through the periscope. Finished, he turned 
around and said: "When this is over, all I 
want is peace and quiet on a few acres of 
land so I can grow " 

We never found out what Tommy 
wanted to grow. We had been sitting with 

241 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



our backs to him when he tumbled into the 
trench, a hole through the back of his head. 
He had forgotten to step down from the 
firing platform, dreaming his dream, and 
he had got his wish — "peace and quiet." 

So they go, one by one, but always some 
one must pay the price, and that daily, so 
that those who come after, whether they be 
of our own blood, may live in a world where 
such things as war may never occur again. 

Here at home, safe for awhile, among 
my old friends, I sometimes dream. Sitting 
by myself in the subway or on a train, I 
let my mind run riot among the many things 
I have seen. 

I see a civilian hanging to a strap in a 
subway car, one of our assimilated citi- 
zens, and as I look at him something in 
the way of a vision comes to me. I see 
his clothes change to khaki and I see him 
six months later in a trench, on duty, hun- 
gry perhaps, but he is there in France, lean- 
ing against the wall of the trench as non- 
chalantly as he is now swinging on the strap 
in the subway. 

U2 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



I can see troops, endless lines of khaki 
troops, moving along one of the usual tree- 
lined, cobbled roads of the French country- 
side. Ahead of them is a crackling mass of 
flame, a cloud of smoke hanging over it all. 
They march toward it. They march 
through it. The flames die away. Night 
comes, and ofif that hill come back some of 
those who marched into the flame, crippled 
and tired and longing for rest. On the hill 
itself are those who won't come back; those 
who have paid the price, lying in queer 
positions, some on their hands and knees 
like a Mohammedan in prayer; others like 
a Mohammedan who is tired of prayer and 
has rolled on his back; still others who 
have lain down as though to rest. 

It is for those who have lain down that 
we must go on and on. 

Over the hill and going down the other 
side are those who have gone through the 
flame unscathed, happy and pride filled in 
a job well done. 

I can remember many things of my years 



OVER THERE AND BACK 



at the front. Some I like to recall. Some 
of my memories are happy ones. Some 
bring a chuckle even now. Others are sad; 
grewsome. But through them all shines 
one; the memory of a mother's letters to 
her son; nothing in them of worry, nothing 
of the troubles at home, nothing but love 
and pride and encouragement, and the hope 
that soon we would be with each other 
again. 

THE END. 



244 



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A Student in 

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Letters of Captain Ferdinand Belmont 

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